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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Liquor Problem 



By 

NORMAN E. RICHARDSON 



In Collaboration with 

The Scientific Temperance Federation, Cora Frances Stod- 
dard, Secretary; The Temperance Society of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, Deets Picket, Research Secretary; 
Harry S. Warner, Katherine Lent Stevenson, William 
E. Johnson, Arthur J. Davis, and others 



THE ABINGDON PRESS 
New York Cincinnati 



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Copyright, 191 5, by 
NORMAN E. RICHARDSON 



The Bible text printed with each lesson under the heading, The Scripture 
Reference, is taken from the American Standard Edition of the Revised Bible, 
copyright, 190 1, by Thomas Nelson & Sons, and is used by permission. 



APR -6 1915 

ICU398219 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Author's Preface v 

Lesson I. The Magnitude and Seriousness of the 

Liquor Problem i 

Lesson II. The Physical Effects of Alcohoi 12 

Lesson III. The Effect of Alcohol Upon Race 

Welfare 23 

Lesson IV. Crime and the Liquor Traffic 32 

Lesson V. The Saloon and the Social Evil 43 

Lesson VI. The Liquor Traffic and the Public 

School 53 

Lesson VII. Alcohol the Enemy of Labor 63 

Lesson VIII. The Political Activity of the Liquor 

Interests 73 

Lesson IX. How Drink Injures the Home 84 

Lesson X. The Use of Alcohol a Source of Poverty 95 

Lesson XL The Social Phase of the Saloon 105 

Lesson XII. Some Past Failures and the Lessons 

They Teach 115 

Lesson XIII. An Amendment to the Constitution of 

the United States 125 

Lesson XIV. National Aspects of the Liquor Problem 136 

Lesson XV. Successful Anti-Liquor Methods 146 

Bibliography: Some of the Best Books 
on the Liquor Problem 157 

Index 159 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

In the preparation of this book, the author has received 
valuable assistance from the Scientific Temperance Federa- 
tion, Mrs. Emma L. Transeau having read the manuscript, 
carefully verifying all of the facts, and Miss Cora Frances 
Stoddard having prepared the material for the lessons on 
"The Effect of Alcohol on Race Welfare." The Temperance 
Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, through its 
research secretary, Mr. Deets Picket, contributed many help- 
ful suggestions. Mr. Harry S. Warner, whose book on 
"Social Welfare and the Liquor Problem" is a standard 
work on that subject, contributed the lesson on "The Social 
Phase of the Saloon," and Mr. Ernest H. Cherrington, editor 
of the "American Issue," the one on "An Amendment to the 
Constitution of the United States." Dr. W. Stewart Whitte- 
more, M.D., Mrs. Katherine Lent Stevenson, and Mr. William 
E. Johnson, were freely consulted in connection with the 
preparation of the lessons on "The Physical Effects of 
Alcohol," "Crime and the Liquor Traffic," and "How Drink 
Injures the Home." Many of the practical suggestions, 
pointing out "What Our Class Can Do," were offered by 
Mr. Arthur J. Davis, State Superintendent of the Massa- 
chusetts Anti-Saloon League. Grateful acknowledgment of 
the assistance of Mr. Raymond F. Piper is also expressed. 

The first suggestion that such a book be prepared came 
from Mr. Philip A. Goold, then a student in Boston Uni- 
versity, and the first lesson was written by him. 

NORMAN E. RICHARDSON. 

Boston University, August 17, 1914. 



LESSON I 

THE MAGNITUDE AND SERIOUS- 
NESS OF THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

The Scripture Reference 

O Jehovah, thou God to whom vengeance belongeth. 
Thou God to whom vengeance belongeth, shine forth. 
Lift up thyself, thou judge of the earth: 
Render to the proud their desert. 
Jehovah, how long shall the wicked, 
How long shall the wicked triumph? 
They prate, they speak arrogantly: 
All the workers of iniquity boast themselves. 
They break in pieces thy people, O Jehovah, 
And afflict thy heritage. 
They slay the widow and the sojourner, 
And murder the fatherless. 
And they say, Jehovah will not see, 
Neither will the God of Jacob consider. 
Consider, ye brutish among the people ; 
And ye fools, when will ye be wise? 
He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? 
He that formed the eye, shall he not see? 
He that chastiseth the nations, shall not he correct, 
Even he that teacheth man knowledge? 
Jehovah knoweth the thoughts of man, 
That they are vanity. 

Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Jehovah, 
And teachest out of thy law ; 

That thou mayest give him rest from the days of adversity, 
Until the pit be digged for the wicked. 
For Jehovah will not cast off his people, 
Neither will he forsake his inheritance. 
For judgment shall return unto righteousness; 
And all the upright in heart shall follow it. 
Who will rise up for me against the evil-doers? 
Who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity? 

— Psalm 94. 1-16. 



THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the 
Spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary the 
one to the other; that ye may not do the things that 
ye would. But if ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not 
under the law. Now the works of the flesh are 
manifest, which are these: fornication, uncleanness, 
lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, 
jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, parties, envy- 
ings, drunkenness, revelings, and such like; of which 
I forewarn you, even as I did forewarn you, that 
they who practice such things shall not inherit the 
kingdom of God. — Galatiaris 5. 17-21. 



The Lesson 

The liquor business a power to be reckoned with 

The liquor problem challenges the attention of every patriot, 
particularly if he prays : "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be 
done in earth as' it is in heaven." A fulfillment of that 
prayer means, among other things, a State, a nation, a world 
without the evils which can be traced to the saloon. Men 
may hold different views as to the solution of the problem, 
but no man who looks thoughtfully at the facts can doubt 
the magnitude of the liquor traffic and the peril which it has 
become to American life. It involves large numbers of 
men, enormous quantities of raw materials, and vast sums 
of money. It affects the economic, social, and political life 
of all the people, and it is so organized as to use its influence 
and power to further its own definite purpose to increase 
its markets and profits. 

Where it is sold 

To appreciate the size of the business we must know some- 
thing of the making and selling of liquor. There are ap- 
proximately one hundred and seventy-five thousand places in 
the United States where liquor is sold, including saloons, 
restaurants, hotels, clubs, etc. Over thirty per cent of these 
places are saloons. They aggregate an owned and rented 



MAGNITUDE AND SERIOUSNESS 3 

capital of about $1,000,000,000 and employ about two hundred 
thousand men. 

A Titanic disaster 

The Titanic carried down fifteen hundred and three people. 
But the liquor business destroys that number of men and 
women every eight days in the year. At least one man in 
every seven and one-half men who die in the United States 
loses his life as the direct or indirect result of drink. 

Vice and poverty 

Conditions in and around the average saloon, dance hall, 
summer resort, hotel bar, and liquor-selling cafe show that 
they breed vice as well as poverty. On this point the testi- 
mony of the liquor trade itself, as stated in the North Amer- 
ican Wine and Spirit Journal, March, 1913, runs as follows : 
"Some of the drinking places found in nearly all the large 
cities are a blot upon American civilization. . . . Many de- 
pend upon the debauching of women as a source of indirect 
revenue." 

Liquor making 

There are in the United States twenty-three hundred and 
seventeen liquor-making establishments with a total capital of 
over $770,000,000. Their economic importance is best shown 
by the number of wage-earners employed. It is shown in 
the "Abstract of the United States Census," 1910, that "in 
this respect the brewery industry ranks twenty-fifth among 
the industries listed and the distillery industry forty-third." 
This gives them a comparatively low place from the view- 
point of economic importance as is shown by the following 
table : 

For each $1,000,000 invested 

Ladies' clothing industry employs.... 1,180 workers 
Men's clothing industry employs 870 workers 



4 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

Boot and shoe industry employs 884 workers 

Lumber and timber products employ.. 590 workers 

Bread and bakery products employ.... 454 workers 

The average industry employs 358 workers 

Liquor-making industry employs 81 workers 

Liquor consumption 

In the United States during the year ending June, 1912, 
2,128,452,226 gallons of liquor were consumed, an average of 
21.98 gallons for each man, woman, and child in the country, 
or about one hundred and twenty gallons for each average- 
sized family. Since a great many people do not drink at all, 
those who do must have consumed far more per capita and 
per family than this. It is alarming to notice the rate of 
increase of this consumption per capita. It was 4.17 gallons 
in 1840; 4.08 gallons in 1850; 6.43 gallons in i860; 7.7 in 1870; 
16.72 in 1890; 17.76 in 1900; 19.85 in 1905. 

The cost of drink 

A very conservative estimate of the direct annual cost of 
drink is $1,750,000,000. Compare this with other expenditures : 
$165,000,000 Church Expenditures, 1906. 
$233,778,000 Potatoes (farm value). 
$290,430,728 Panama Canal (up to November 1, 1912). 
$426,250,434 Public Schools, 1910. 

$654,804,624 United States Government Expenditures, 1912. 
$737,876,000 Printing and Publishing, 19x2. 
$1,000,000,000 Iron and Steel, 1906. 
$1,484,889,647 Cattle on Farms, 1910. 
$1,750,000,000 Liquor Cost, 191 1. 

Wages and raw materials 

What part of the money spent for liquor pays for wages 
and for raw material? 



MAGNITUDE AND SERIOUSNESS 5 

$100 spent by the consumer for 

Automobiles will pay in wages $23. 10 

and use up materials worth 62 . 50 

Women's clothing will pay in wages 23.00 

and use up materials worth 61 . 10 

Men's clothing will pay in wages 20.70 

and use up materials worth 57-90 

Boots and shoes will pay in wages 20.60 

and use up materials worth 69.60 

Paper and wood pulp will pay in wages 17.20 

and use up materials worth 69.80 

Average industry will pay in wages 18.60 

and use up materials worth 65.90 

Malt and distilled liquors will pay in wages 8.90 

and use up materials worth 26.80 

The evidence is conclusive that neither the laborer nor the 
producer of raw material can afford to let the making of 
liquor replace the many industries which surpass it in per 
cent paid for labor and for raw material. 

The indirect cost of drink 

The magnitude and seriousness of the liquor business are 
seen in its indirect effects. In addition to the money paid 
over the bar, the liquor traffic "holds up" society in many 
other ways. One hundred and fourteen million five hundred 
thousand bushels of grain and forty-four million three hun- 
dred thousand gallons of molasses that might be used to 
satisfy normal demands for food are annually made into 
liquor. The strength and ability of about three hundred 
thousand men are wasted in making and selling intoxicants; 
and besides this they are needed to develop natural resources 
and to carry on beneficent industrial enterprises. The drink- 
ing man's highest mental and physical efficiency is impaired 
by this indulgence in alcoholic drinks. The moderate 
drinker's losses are from eight to ten per cent. Industrial 



6 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

accidents, sickness, and death from this cause cut down the 
labor force of the community. Hospitals, poor-houses, insane 
asylums, and prisons are from ten to fifty per cent fuller 
because of alcoholics. Society is thus called upon to pay 
millions of dollars to support and care for the wretched 
products of the liquor business. This indirect cost exceeds 
$1,000,000,000 annually, and is easily twice as great as the 
amount received by the national, city, and town governments 
from liquor licenses and taxes. 

Policy of the liquor traffic 

The allies of the liquor traffic are legion in number and 
are often found in the most unexpected quarters. The large 
number of men with whom the trade has business dealings 
(buying from them all kinds of commodities from grain 
and bottles to steam engines and fire insurance) are in- 
fluenced to take sides with them. It appeals to them as 
"good business" to do so. The United States Brewers' 
Association has formed as many of these men as they can 
reach into "business men's associations'' and leagues for 
political purposes. These organizations under different names 
in various States publish license campaign papers, send out 
literature, and hold rallies. The value of such work to the 
liquor interests is far greater because the ordinary citizen 
knows nothing of the true purpose and backing of these 
leagues. A typical letter sent out by such a body, The Manu- 
facturers' and Merchants' Association of New Jersey, clearly 
implies a boycott of the business man who fails to pay his 
dues : 

"We are again calling upon you for your dues for 
membership in The Manufacturers' and Merchants' 
Association of New Jersey. We are about preparing 
our yearly report to be presented to the members and 
brewers of the State, and we do not wish to hand in 
your name to the brewers as a delinquent member of 
the association. You are doing a yearly business with 
the brewing industry which is seeking to support itself 



MAGNITUDE AND SERIOUSNESS 7 

through this organization against the Anti-Saloon 
League." 

Newspapers allies of the liquor traffic 

With few exceptions the newspaper which publishes liquor 
advertisements is to be looked upon as an ally of the trade, 
for the large revenue from this source is promptly withdrawn 
whenever the editor prints news items or editorials which 
reflect unfavorably upon the traffic. In the spring of 1910 
the Boston Herald was thus disciplined because of its advo- 
cacy of a temperance measure pending in the Massachusetts 
Legislature. 

Municipal licenses as allies of the liquor traffic 

New York City annually receives $12,800,000 and Chicago 
$7,000,000 from municipal licenses. One of the bad results 
of this system is the practical bribing of voters to favor 
"license" at the polls. The senior deacon of a Massachusetts 
church votes for license, saying, "How can our town pay its 
bills if we cut off this source of revenue?" Because of the 
indirect cost of the liquor business, the deacon's argument is 
"penny wise and pound foolish." But the point here is that 
he is a useful ally of the liquor interests. 

Organizations allied to the liquor traffic 

All over the country the trade has formed local, State, and 
national organizations, cooperating to guard its interests 
by educational campaigns and political activity. The most 
important national associations with which the smaller bodies 
are affiliated are 

The National Retail Liquor Dealers' Association, 
The National Wholesale Liquor Dealers' Association, 
The National Liquor League of the United States, and 
The United States Brewers' Association. 



8 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

Educational campaigns of liquor interests 

Practically every liquor men's organization has a publicity 
department. The work of The United States Brewers' Asso- 
ciation is typical of what is being done by other such bodies. 
The report of its publicity committee and a "Literary Treat- 
ment of the Liquor Question" take up more than half of 
their three-hundred-page year book for 1913. The same 
association publishes "The Text Book of True Temperance," 
which for more than three hundred and twenty pages pleads 
for the extended use of and sale of beer and light wines. 
It contains frequent errors and perversions of fact, and 
misinterprets many of the statistics which it does not mis- 
quote. Moreover, it has been sent free to a great many public 
libraries in cities and small towns as a trustworthy work on 
temperance. Even at the Boston Public Library it was ac- 
cepted, catalogued, and placed on the shelves beside reliable 
volumes on the subject, until persistent remonstrance called 
attention to the errors it contained. It was finally removed, 
but it still remains in many libraries. 

Political aggressiveness 

This educational work is largely for political ends. The 
main objects of the organization of the "wet" forces are to 
get a license vote, elect men to office whom they can "influ- 
ence," defeat unfavorable legislation, and secure favorable 
legislation. When Theodore Roosevelt was Police Commis- 
sioner of New York city, he said, "The most powerful saloon 
keepers controlled the politicians and the police, while the 
latter terrorized and blackmailed all other saloon keepers. If 
the American people do not control it, it will control them." 

Use of attorneys and publicity bureaus 

The work of the national liquor associations and leagues is 
shown in the following quotation from The Northwestern 
Liquor and Tobacco Journal : 



MAGNITUDE AND SERIOUSNESS 9 

"The National Wholesale Liquor Dealers' Associa- 
tion and the National Brewers' Association employ 
high-salaried attorneys to protect their interests at the 
State Legislatures and in Congress. They maintain 
at great expense a publicity bureau, sending out tons 
of literature treating the economic side of the prob- 
lem. They assess themselves thousands of dollars 
to defray this expense. Their respective political 
bureaus spend an untold amount of money to prevent 
drastic legislation." 

The need of personal interest and united effort 

The magnitude and danger of the liquor business are 
apparent. Its forces are moving forward together with a 
definite program of extension. The moral forces must also 
get together and move forward behind a definite program 
of equal magnitude if they are sincere and intelligent in 
their opposition to the saloon. The liquor traffic will end in 
America whenever the American citizens really want it to 
end, that is, whenever they are sufficiently in earnest to do 
something about it, not one minute before. The challenge 
comes to each man in the questions : "What are you going 
to do about it?" "To what extent do you feel an individual 
responsibility?" 

The opinion of safe and intelligent leaders 

Intelligent leaders in the fight against the Liquor Business 
have thus described it: 

"The liquor traffic is national in its organization, 
character, and influence. It overflows the boundaries 
of States and refuses to be regulated or controlled. 
It is a federal evil; a national menace, too powerful 
for State authority, requiring: national jurisdiction 
and treatment. It beggars the individual, burdens the 
State, and impoverishes the nation. It commercializes 
vice and capitalizes human weakness. It impairs the 
public health, breaks the public peace, and debauches 
the public morals. It intimidates and makes cowards 
of public men. It dominates parties and conventions. 
It cajoles, bribes, or badgers the makers, interpreters, 



io THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

and administrators of law, and suborns the public 
press. 

"It claims for itself a special right and privilege 
asserted by no other interest in all the land, however 
great or powerful; a right and privilege utterly in- 
compatible with free government, the right and privi- 
lege to infract municipal ordinances at will, to violate 
and break legislative resolves and enactments, and to 
set aside the constitutional provisions of sovereign 
States, however solemn and sacred. Refusing all 
domestic regulation and control, it leaves the Amer- 
ican people but two alternatives — the abject surrender 
of their inherent right of self-government or its 
national annihilation. Between such a choice free 
men cannot hesitate. ,, 

Some Pertinent Questions 

To what extent will liquor manufacturers and dealers de- 
velop their business if no opposition confronts them? 

To what useful ends could the three hundred thousand 
men now employed in the liquor business be employed? 

If a "hard drinker" should substitute coffee and water 
for alcoholic drinks, how much less would it cost him in a 
year? 

What could he do with his savings? 

Would the change be injurious to him in any way? 

Would it be easier for him to remain temperate if there 
were no saloons? 

What responsibility has a Christian man for the character 
of the public sentiment in his community relative to the 
saloon ? 

How could it be made profitable for newspapers to refuse 
liquor advertisements? 

Suggest political plans for the extermination or curtail- 
ment of the liquor business: (i) in your community, (2) State, 
(3) nation. 

Do the present liquor laws represent public sentiment on 
this question in your community? 

How can that sentiment be elevated? 



MAGNITUDE AND SERIOUSNESS n 

What is your answer to the Psalmist's question: How long 
shall the wicked triumph? 

Can a man dominated by the spirit of Christ be engaged in 
the liquor business? 

Class Discussion 
Bring out clearly these three points : 

The magnitude of the liquor business : capital invested, 
men employed, raw material used, methods used for self- 
protection and development, vast sums of money spent by 
consumers, allies. 

The nature of the liquor business : relation to poverty and 
vice, relative economic inferiority, indirect burdens placed 
upon the community and state, its physical, mental, and 
moral injury to the individual. Social and political corrup- 
tion. 

Ignorance, indifference, and lack of cooperation on the 
part of those voters who are responsible for public opinion 
and laws permitting this business to thrive. Ultimately the 
saloon or the nation must be overthrown. 

What Our Class Can Do 

Find out how many saloons in our community are owned 
or controlled by brewers. 

Find out how much money is invested in the liquor busi- 
ness: (i) in our community, (2) in our State. How much is 
spent for drink in our community? How much of this 
money leaves the community? 

Investigate the influence of liquor advertisements upon the 
attitude of the local newspapers toward the liquor business. 



Note: It is very important that a permanent committee 
be appointed to keep carefully, permanently, and systemati- 
cally the facts brought out in the investigations made from 
week to week. 



LESSON II 

THE PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF 
ALCOHOL 

The Scripture Reference 

And when he had brought him down, behold, they 
were spread abroad over all the ground, eating and 
drinking, and dancing, because of all the great spoil 
that they had taken out of the land of the Philistines, 
and out of the land of Judah. And David smote 
them from the twilight even unto the evening of the 
next day: and there escaped not a man of them, save 
four hundred young men, who rode upon camels and 
fled. — I Samuel 30. 16, 17. 

In the twenty and sixth year of Asa king of Judah 
began Elah the son of Baasha to reign over Israel in 
Tirzah, and reigned two years. And his servant 
Zimri, captain of half his chariots, conspired against 
him. Now he was in Tirzah, drinking himself drunk 
in the house of Arza, who was over the household in 
Tirzah: and Zimri went in and smote him, and killed 
him, in the twenty and seventh year of Asa king of 
Judah, and reigned in his stead. — 1 Kings 16. 8-10. 

And every man that striveth in the games exerciseth 
self-control in all things. Now they do it to receive 
a corruptible crown ; but we an incorruptible. — 1 Cor- 
inthians 9. 25. 

The Lesson 

The origin and nature of alcohol 

Yeast is a microscopic plant. It is a fungus growth, not 
being able to make its own food like ordinary plants, but 
living upon the food materials of others. When the yeast 
plant comes into contact with sugar, it feeds upon it, chang- 
ing the sugar in such a way that carbonic acid gas and 
alcohol are left in its place. If it were unable to throw off 

12 



PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL 13 

this waste material, its vital processes would become clogged 
and death would result. In fermentation, yeast is the active 
agent. But when a bottle of cider or grape juice, for instance, 
has fermented until it contains twelve per cent of alcohol, 
the yeast plant dies, being poisoned by the waste material it 
has thrown off. Thus alcohol, like the excretions of lower 
plants and animals, is a poison to those of a higher order. 
It is present in malt and distilled as well as fermented 
liquors. 

Is alcohol a stimulant? 

Dr. Henry S. Williams, after long and careful observations 
upon the influence of alcohol, says : 

"The traditional role of alcohol is that of a stimu- 
lant. It has been supposed to stimulate digestion and 
assimilation ; to stimulate the heart's action ; to stimu- 
late muscular activity and strength; to stimulate the 
mind. The new evidence seems to show that, in the 
final analysis, alcohol stimulates none of these activi- 
ties; that its final effect is everywhere depressive and 
inhibitory (at any rate as regards higher functions) 
rather than stimulative ; that, in short, it is properly 
to be classed with the anesthetics and narcotics. The 
grounds for this view should be of interest to every 
user of alcohol ; of interest, for that matter, to every 
citizen, considering that more than one thousand mil- 
lion gallons of alcoholic beverages are consumed in 
the United States each year." 

A custom based on ignorance 

It was while people were ignorant of the final and real 
effects of alcohol that this injurious custom of alcoholic 
drinking grew to such gigantic proportions. Through igno- 
rance and error men have mistaken for real strength a 
feeling which to their temporarily blurred judgments seemed 
like that of strength. Dr. John J. Abel, of Johns Hopkins 
University, says that "both science and experience of life 
have exploded the pernicious theory that alcohol gives 
any persistent increase of muscular power. The disappear- 



i 4 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

ance of this universal error will greatly reduce the consump- 
tion of alcohol among laboring men." Men have thought 
they were working faster, with greater accuracy, and better 
while those of sober judgment who watched them could 
detect a marked decrease in efficiency. The misinterpreted 
feelings due to alcohol have made possible the enormous 
growth of a really harmful custom. 

This feeling further defined 

What is supposed to be stimulation is the effect of the 
poison in paralyzing in part or in whole the higher centers 
of control whose function is to keep all the activities in 
coordination. The man who staggers may feel that he is 
making superb headway. His power to appreciate a lack 
of coordination in the movements of the muscles has been 
taken away. His feeling of elation may cause him to wear 
a smile on his face or even to boast of his happiness to every 
one he meets. But the cool, sober judgment of those who 
know condemns his conduct as pathetically ridiculous. 

The narcotic effect of alcohol 

The greatest effect of alcohol is registered in the central 
nervous system. The small amount contained in a glass or 
two causes the face to become somewhat flushed, leads one 
to talk more freely and to act as though at greater ease. 
Natural shyness or diffidence is gone, and in its place come 
boldness and loquacity. Greater confidence in both physical 
and mental ability is expressed. The former sense of 
propriety is lulled to sleep. The higher mental faculties that 
control the animal impulses become dull and ineffective. The 
self-restraint that is necessary in the conduct of a true gentle- 
man or gentlewoman, the sensitive appreciation of the higher 
good, and the power to bring oneself into harmony therewith 
ebb away as the quantity of alcohol taken is increased. In 
its extreme effect upon these higher centers of self-control, 
debauchery and lewdness are seen. Intoxication may cause 



PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL 15 

one to think his actions heroic, for he judges them by his 
feelings. The sober man knows they are hellish. 

Alcohol is the enemy of the blood 

"If ordinary air, containing twenty per cent oxygen, is 
mixed with pure blood, ten per cent of the oxygen will 
disappear, but with five per cent of alcohol added to the 
blood only four per cent of the oxygen will be taken up. 
The blood is the home of the red and white corpuscles. The 
red corpuscles, little, flattened disks, only one thirty-two- 
hundredths of an inch in diameter, cause waste matter to be 
burned up, producing heat. The white corpuscles, or leuco- 
cytes, one twenty-five-hundredths of an inch in diameter, 
help to clean the body of waste matter and disease germs. 
If a pneumonia germ enters the body, the white blood cor- 
puscles surround it and swallow it. Hence, they are called 
phagocytes, or cells which devour. They are assisted in 
righting disease by substances in the blood which are poisonous 
to disease microbes. These substances are called opsonins. 
The amount of opsonins grows less in bad health. If the 
finger is cut, the 'matter' which appears in time is composed 
of the dead bodies of the white blood corpuscles which have 
been destroyed in fighting the germs of infection. The 
white blood corpuscles do not like poison, and when even 
small quantities of alcohol are taken, they are repelled, 
driven out of the blood vessels, and if the finger is cut, are 
unable to make their way through the flesh quickly. If they 
do make their way into the blood vessels again to fight 
disease germs, they are sluggish, unable to succeed, and 
sickness follows." It was found in the Pasteur Institute of 
Paris that in almost every case the failures to check the 
development of hydrophobia in persons sent to the Institute 
occurred in alcoholic patients." 

Loss of the powers of discrimination 

After thus showing the baneful effects which come to one 



i6 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

who uses a small amount of alcohol, Dr. W. Stewart Whitte- 
more, a graduate of the Harvard Medical School, goes on 
to say: 

"If his indulgence in alcohol continues, his powers 
of discrimination are next impaired. He will invite 
any stranger that happens along to drink with him, 
and he will intrust his money and his belongings to 
this chance acquaintance as he would to his most 
intimate friend. In his increasing loquacity he will 
tell anything that happens to come into his mind, and 
in this way many a business secret or family skeleton 
has been betrayed. Distinctions between right and 
wrong fade out in his mind. A previously moral man 
will commit acts when in this condition which he 
would never think of doing ordinarily, and which he 
may regret deeply when sober. He may become sud- 
denly quarrelsome or vicious to such an extent that 
he will strike those who are dear to him." 

Description of the drunken state 

At this stage the power of control of the muscles is 
seriously interfered with. The movements of arms and legs 
are uncertain and awkward. Gestures are exaggerated, the 
hand shakes as it reaches for the glass and the man is 
unable to stand steadily or walk straight. Sometimes a 
peculiar recklessness comes over the partially intoxicated 
man and he will attempt the most absurdly dangerous feats. 
A man in this condition was seen deliberately to take a 
hundred pound cake of ice and drop it down two flights of 
stairs. If anyone had chanced to walk through the hall 
below at that moment he would have been killed instantly. 

"Eventually the man's speech becomes thick and incoherent, 
his powers of sight and hearing are impaired, and he sinks 
into a deep stupor which is frequently preceded by nausea 
and vomiting. In this stage the spinal cord shares in the 
depression which we have noted in the brain. The man 
slumps from his seat to the floor, limp and helpless, to sleep 
off the effects of the drug. If very large doses have been 
taken he may remain unconscious ten or twelve hours. 



PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL 17 

Occasionally a drinker will take so much whiskey or other 
form of hard liquor that he never regains consciousness. In 
such cases death is due to the paralysis of that very important 
portion of the brain called the medulla, where the vital 
functions, such as breathing, are regulated and controlled. 

The effect of habitual drinking 

"The man who becomes acutely intoxicated once may 
recover entirely at the end of forty-eight hours. How is it 
with the man who repeats the process week in and week out? 
A slow but permanent impairment of the higher brain func- 
tions becomes noticeable. In the majority of cases the first 
evidence of this is the gradual decline of the power of 
originality. The ability to invent, to open up new avenues 
of business activity or of science, which constitutes the 
highest form of mental activity, is the first to be lost. 

"As time goes on there appears noticeable diminution in the 
power to concentrate the attention upon one thing for any 
length of time. The habitual drinker's mind acts as if con- 
tinually fatigued. Thus it is not surprising that business 
ability diminishes because the very factors which contribute 
to the making of a successful business man are constantly 
being undermined. Judgment and ability to reason clearly 
become things of the past to the chronic alcoholic." 

Alcohol the enemy of the heart and blood vessels 

Fatty degeneration of the heart is frequently the result of 
alcoholic drinking. It acts as a direct poison on the heart's 
muscles and so causes the muscle fibers to become slightly 
swollen in appearance ; there is an increase of the fibrous 
tissue between them and, later on, they become impregnated 
with particles of fat. This is accompanied by dilatation of 
the heart, and subsequently weakening of the valves. The 
increased work put upon this organ as an effect of the use 
of alcohol also causes its degeneration from sheer exhaustion. 
Alcohol causes the small blood vessels to dilate and stay 



18 ' THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

distended, for they have lost their power to relax, and it 
also weakens the arteries and veins, which are apt to rupture. 

Alcohol and the muscles 

In injuring the blood, making it incapable of performing 
its natural function, alcohol becomes the enemy of the 
muscles. It hinders their being built up by the absorption of 
food. It interferes with the carrying of oxygen to the 
muscles and the removing of waste matter so that waste 
outruns repair. The muscles of the hard drinker become 
soft and flabby while their strength is correspondingly 
diminished. 

Alcohol as a household remedy 

In a carefully prepared statement Captain Richmond Hotson 
says : 

"The greater liability to disease in drinkers is true 
as to pneumonia, typhoid, and, broadly speaking, to 
all diseases. So the idea that you need alcohol, or 
that it is a legitimate household remedy, has been 
entirely exploded. Henceforth, I believe, when laws 
are drafted for the various States, legislators will not 
make any exception to the use of alcohol, or alcoholic 
beverages, even for use for medicinal purposes. You 
can wipe out its use for medicinal purposes without 
loss." 

Alcohol the ally of disease 

Statistics of H. Dillon Gouge, public actuary, South 
Australia, for the years 1890-92, show that the average number 
of weeks of sickness per member in accident insurance 
societies writing only abstainers, was 1.2 weeks. The average 
number of weeks in general societies was 2.3 weeks. The 
average duration of the time of sickness in abstaining 
societies was 6.4 weeks, and in general societies 10.9 weeks. 
In abstaining societies, the loss by death was .6 per cent; 
in general societies 1.3 per cent. 



PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL 19 

Abstinence and longevity 

At 30 years of age, the average insured man may expect 
to live 35 years longer; the abstainer may expect to live 38.8 
years longer. At 40 years of age, the average insured man's 
expectation of life is 27.3 years; the abstainers, 30.1 years, 
an advantage of about eleven per cent for the abstainer 
(R. M. Moore, Actuary). 

Experience of the New York Mutual Life Insurance Com- 
pany, 1875-1889, showed that among insured abstainers the 
death rate was only seventy-eight per cent of the expected 
rate ; among non-abstainers it was ninety-six per cent (Van 
Cice). 

Deaths due to drink 

Joel G. Van Cise, Actuary of the Equitable Life Assurance 
Society of the United States, says : 

"The experience of the Sceptre Life Assurance 
Society, Ltd., for the twenty years from 1884 to 1903 
inclusive gives the following figures : For abstainers, 
expected deaths, fourteen hundred and forty; actual 
deaths, seven hundred and ninety-two ; being fifty-five 
per cent of the expected deaths. Non-abstainers, 
expected deaths, twenty-seven hundred and thirty; 
actual deaths, eighteen hundred and eighty, or 
seventy-nine per cent of the expected." 

The Scottish Temperance Assurance Company, for the 
same period, showed the relation of actual to expected 
deaths was twenty-six per cent higher for non-abstainers 
than for abstainers. 

In the case of both companies the difference as between 
abstainers and non-abstainers is remarkable, the percentage 
of the death rate to expected being about fifty per cent 
higher with non-abstainers than with abstainers. Surely it 
is true that "in the tug of war between life and death, drink 
pulls on the graveyard end." 

Drink's toll from the prime of life 

In the vital statistics of Basel, Switzerland, for 1892- 1906 



20 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

alcohol is given as one cause of death in ninety-one per 
cent of men forty to fifty years of age dying of liver cirrhosis ; 
in forty-three per cent of deaths from digestive diseases; in 
thirty per cent of deaths from pneumonia; in twenty-three 
per cent of deaths from diseases of the circulation ; in twenty- 
five per cent of kidney disease. 

Alcohol and suicide 

According to the United States Mortality Reports, twenty- 
three per cent of the suicides in the United States are sup- 
posed to be due to intemperance. During the years 1900- 
1908 it is estimated that eleven thousand, nine hundred and 
eighty-six persons killed themselves because of alcohol. 

Alcohol and the individual 

In concluding his article on Alcohol and the Individual, 
Dr. Henry S. Williams says: 

"So I am bound to believe, on the evidence, that 
if you take alcohol habitually, in any quantity what- 
ever, it is to some extent a menace to you. I am 
bound to believe, in the light of what science has 
revealed: (1) that you are tangibly threatening the 
physical structures of your stomach, your liver, your 
kidneys, your heart, your blood-vessels, your nerves, 
your brain; (2) that you are unequivocally decreas- 
ing your capacity for work in any field, be it physical, 
intellectual, or artistic; (3) that you are in some 
measure lowering the grade of your mind, dulling 
your higher aesthetic sense, and taking the finer edge 
off your morals ; (4) that you are distinctly lessening 
your chances of maintaining health and attaining 
longevity; and (5) that you may be entailing upon 
your descendants yet unborn a bond of incalculable 
misery." 

Some Pertinent Questions 
What part has ignorance of the effects of alcohol had in 
the spread of the drinking custom? 

Show how deceiving are the effects of alcohol. 
How has science demonstrated this deceptiveness ? 



PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL 21 

Can the effect of alcohol be rightly described as stimulating ? 

How is the body's protection against infection impaired by 
the use of alcohol? 

What is the real nature of the seeming stimulation which 
results from drinking alcoholic beverages? 

What is the nature of alcohol? How is it produced? 

What effect does drink have upon length of life? 

Describe the state of intoxication. 

What is the result of alcohol upon the heart, the muscles, 
the blood, the blood-vessels? 

To what extent is alcohol a good household remedy? 

How does abstinence influence longevity? 

Sum up the physical effects of alcohol under five heads. 

In your opinion should the laws that guard the public 
health make liquor-selling a crime? 

What would have been the result if the Amalekites, after 
having destroyed Ziklag, had remained as free from alcohol 
as are the Russians, German, French, and English troops to- 
day? 

How did it happen that King Elah lost his life so easily 
at the hands of Zimri? 

What is the highest motive that one can have in abstaining 
from alcoholic drinks? 

Class Discussion 

Show clearly the real nature of alcohol. 

Then point out its effect upon the various parts of the 
body, especially the nerve centers and brain. 

Take time thoroughly to discuss the deceptive nature of 
the feelings produced by alcohol. 

Emphasize the effects of drinking beer and wine as well 
as the stronger beverages. 

What Our Class Can Do 

Send to the Temperance Society of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, Shawnee Building, Topeka, Kansas, for a list 



22 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

of practical experiments showing vividly the effects of alcohol 
on health, which can be laid before the class and the Sunday- 
school. 

See to it that the moderate or occasional drinkers among 
the friends of the class members are supplied with facts 
concerning the effects of moderate drinking. Write the 
Scientific Temperance Federation, 23 Trull Street, Boston, 
Mass., for literature for distribution. 

Have "Public Health'' the subject to be discussed at the 
monthly meeting. Get a Christian physician to show the 
effects of liquor upon the health of the community. Have 
a member appointed to look up the local public records 
showing causes of deaths in our own community. Present 
the facts to the class. 



LESSON III 

THE EFFECT OF ALCOHOL UPON 
RACE WELFARE 

The Scripture Reference 

And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the 
family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah ; and 
his wife was barren, and bare not. And the angel of 
Jehovah appeared unto the woman, and said unto her, 
Behold now, thou art barren, and bearest not; but 
thou shalt conceive, and bear a son. Now therefore 
beware, I pray thee, and drink no wine nor strong 
drink, and eat not any unclean thing : for lo, thou 
shalt conceive, and bear a son ; and no razor shall 
come upon his head; for the child shall be a Nazirite 
unto God from the womb : and he shall begin to save 
Israel out of the hand of the Philistines. Then the 
woman came and told her husband, saying, A man 
of God came unto me, and his countenance was Jike 
the countenance of the angel of God, very terrible ; 
and I asked him not whence he was, neither told he 
me his name : but he said unto me, Behold, thou shalt 
conceive, and bear a son; and now drink no wine 
nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing ; for 
the child shall be a Nazirite unto God from the 
womb to the day of his death. — Judges 13. 2-7. 

Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, 
and men of strength to mingle strong drink; that 
justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away the 
righteousness of the righteous from him ! 

Therefore as the tongue of fire devoureth the 
stubble, and as the dry grass sinketh down in the 
flame, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their 
blossom shall go up as dust ; because they have 
rejected the law of Jehovah of hosts, and despised 
the word of the Holy One of Israel. 

— Isaiah 5. 22-24. 

23 



24 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

The Lesson 
The saloon is harmful to human life 

Every institution of society ultimately stands or falls by 
its effect on human life. The saloon will be no exception. 
Already it receives treatment different from that of any 
other selling agency. Meat markets, grocery and dry goods 
stores are not hedged about with the restrictions which are 
peculiar to the saloon. The fundamental difference lies in 
the fact that what the saloon sells has possibilities of harm 
in it, that it is detrimental rather than beneficial to human 
life. 

High value placed upon human life 

The valuation placed upon human life has probably never 
been as high as now. It is this that is the inspiration of 
practically all movements for peace, for social betterment 
and justice. "A sound race" is the keynote of the work 
for social purity, for wisdom in marriage, for the study and 
prevention of feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, idiocy, and insanity. 

Alcohol and Race Degeneracy 

The relation of alcohol to race degeneracy has been 
receiving increasing attention in recent years. For a long 
time physicians have often observed in the families of 
drinkers, especially when the drink habit has been conspicuous 
for more than one generation, signs of physical or mental 
weakness. Efforts have been made to ascertain the extent 
of the interrelation of degeneracy and alcoholism by studying 
the parentages of defective children, or, reversing the process, 
by studying the children of alcoholic and nonalcoholic parents. 

The idiot, the feeble-minded, and the epileptic 

By the first method, for instance, Dr. Shuttleworth, a 
famous English specialist, in an article in the British Journal 



EFFECT UPON RACE WELFARE 25 

of Inebriety, January, 1909, reported that of twelve hundred 
cases of idiocy and feeble-mindedness at the Royal Albert 
Asylum thirteen and one-quarter per cent were attributed 
to alcoholic parentage. Nineteen per cent of the admissions 
for epilepsy at the Craig Colony for Epileptics, in New 
York, in 191 1, had alcoholic heredity, according to the annual 
report. 

A heavy drinker and his children 

A few instances are on record where to parents of normal 
children one defective child was born known to have had 
its beginning when one or both parents were under the 
influence of alcohol. Dr. Schweighofer, in the Archives of 
Internal Medicine for October, 1912, recorded a case where 
a normal woman married a normal man and had three normal 
children. After his death, she married a heavy drinker, and 
had three children. One became a drunkard, one was infantile. 
Both contracted tuberculosis, which had never before been 
in the family. The third child was a social degenerate and 
drunkard. By a third marriage, again to a sober man, the 
mother again produced sound children. Other similar cases 
have been reported. 

The children of "abstainers," "moderates" and 
"drinkers" 

Dr. Laitinen, of the University of Helsingfors, collected 
statistics for the 1909 International Congress Against Alcohol- 
ism, as to the vitality and physical condition of twenty 
thousand and eight children in fifty-eight hundred and forty- 
five families. The families were classified according to the 
habits of the parents as "Abstaining," those who had never 
taken alcohol, or at least not since marriage; "Moderate," 
those who took no more alcohol than corresponds to one 
glass of four per cent beer daily; and "Drinkers," those 
who drink daily more than the equivalent of one glass of 



26 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

four per cent beer. The child mortality in the three groups 
ran as follows : 

Children Mis- 
died carriages 
Per cent Per cent 

Abstaining families 13-45 1-07 

Moderates' families 23.17 5.26 

Drinkers' families 32.02 7. 11 

A comparison of the weight and development of the 
living children 

Comparing the weight and development of the children 
who lived, it was found that the average weight of children 
of abstainers was greater at birth, and that these children 
developed more rapidly during the first eight months than 
the children of the "moderates" ; the "drinkers' " children 
were smallest at birth and developed most slowly. 

The children of drunken mothers 

W. C. Sullivan, M.D., the English investigator, shows that 
of six hundred children of one hundred and twenty drunken 
mothers, 55.8 per cent died in infancy or were born dead, and 
that several of the survivors were defective. Many of these 
women had sober women relatives married to sober husbands. 
The mortality among the children of these latter was 23.9 per 
cent. 

The drunkard's home 

Unhygienic conditions in the home of the drinker may 
undoubtedly be a factor in this higher child mortality. Money 
diverted to the liquor-seller cannot be paid to the landlord 
for a suitable home, to the grocer for abundant nourishing 
food for mother and children, to the coal dealer for fuel, to 
the merchant for proper clothing. Conditions may thus be 
created tending to child sickness and mortality, especially 
if the mother is obliged to help support the family because 
of the father's drinking habits. 



EFFECT UPON RACE WELFARE 27 

Alcohol and nonhuman animal life 

But experiments on animal life are free from these com- 
plications. Studies of hen's eggs, rabbits, guinea pigs, and 
dogs have definitely shown degenerating effects of alcohol 
under careful experiments. Probably the most conclusive 
evidence on this point is afforded by the recent experiments 
by Dr. Charles R. Stockard on guinea pigs. The young of 
parents subjected to alcohol, short of intoxication, were 
compared with the young of animals given exactly the same 
care except for alcohol. Three tests were made with the 
following results : 

(1) An alcoholic father. When the father only was alco- 
holic, of twenty-four matings, fourteen gave no result at all. 
Only twelve living young were born. Seven soon died, 
leaving five living and these are runts, and excitable animals. 
All that died "showed various nervous disturbances, having 
epileptic-like seizures, and in every case died in a state of 
convulsion. This is commonly the fate of feeble and nervously 
defective children." 

(2) An alcoholic mother. When the mother only was 
alcoholic, out of four matings, but five young were born. 
Only two survived. One of these was mated with an alco- 
holic. She was killed by accident, but one of her young 
(which thus had an alcoholic father and grandmother) was 
found to be deformed and showed other signs of degeneracy. 

(3) Alcoholic parents. When both parents were alcoholic 
only one living litter was born of fourteen matings. This 
consisted of one weak individual, which died in convulsions 
on the sixth day after birth. 

Thus from the alcoholic families, forty-two matings gave 
only seven surviving young, of whom five were runts. 

With non-alcoholic parents, nine matings gave seventeen 
young, all surviving and all large, vigorous, active animals 
for their age. 

"This is, indeed, a decided effect of alcohol on the off- 
spring," says Dr. Stockard. 



28 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

The germ of life 

The secret of the harm wrought on posterity by the 
alcohol-user is believed by many students to lie in the effect 
of alcohol on the cells in which human life begins. These 
germ-cells, of which "the individual is the trustee," are now 
known to be susceptible to certain chemical agents circulating 
in the blood. A reliable statement of this fact may be found 
in Forel's "Nervous and Mental Hygiene," pages one hundred 
and twenty-four and two hundred and ten. The poisons of 
lead and of infectious diseases may so affect the germ plasm 
as to cause lowered vitality, with death during infancy, 
imperfect development showing itself in convulsions, epilepsy, 
feeble-mindedness, and insanity. Many physicians believe that 
alcohol should be included among the substances capable of 
causing such changes in the germ-cell. It is known, as already 
shown, that in the family of the alcoholic there is a heavier 
percentage of premature births and of infant mortality. The 
experiments with the alcoholized fathers of guinea pigs 
"clearly demonstrate," said the experimenter (Dr. Stockard), 
"that the paternal germ-cells may be modified by chemical 
treatment (of the animal) to such a degree that the male will 
beget abnormal offspring, even though he be mated with a 
vigorous female." Dr. Charles B. Davenport and Dr. David 
F. Weeks in their book, "A First Study of Inheritance in 
Epilepsy," state that there is a "constant excess beyond expec- 
tation of epileptic and feeble-minded offspring from alcoholic 
parents . . . from ten per cent to twenty per cent more 
children in any fraternity are defective than would be were 
it not for alcohol." It may be said that many, including the 
authors just quoted, believe that alcoholism itself may be an 
expression of defect, that persons with these defects are in 
turn more susceptible to alcohol, thus possibly forming a 
vicious alcoholic circle. Further, the use of alcohol often 
seems to bring out latent tendencies to physical and mental 
defects that might never appear but for this debilitating and 
degenerating habit. 



EFFECT UPON RACE WELFARE 29 

The dependent, delinquent, and criminal 

The serious risk which human welfare incurs in the use 
of a substance capable of increasing the number of defective 
lives appears in the fact that it is now believed that out of 
these classes of subnormal persons come many of the de- 
pendent, delinquent criminals, ne'er-do-wells, and immoral 
persons. This is the opinion of the famous German physician, 
Dr. Adolf Frick, as stated in his "Einfluss der Geistigen 
Getranke auf die Kinder." The feeble-minded children, for 
instance, without self-control, but having the instincts of 
appetite and maturity, readily become the victims of evil- 
minded men and women and perpetuate their kind, starting 
new lives which inevitably are a waste and burden instead 
of a strength and glory to the human race. 

Unto the third and fourth generation 

It may readily be admitted that the worst consequences of 
parental drinking may not always show themselves in the 
first generation of descendants from a drinker, especially if 
he is of non-drinking ancestry, or if his children were born 
before the habit reached its climax in himself, or if the 
mother is free from alcoholic inheritance. "It may even 
require several generations," said Professor Adolf Frick, "for 
actual drunkards to appear in a moderate drinking family, 
but then the fatal power advances with giant strides." In 
view of the social conditions of the past, there are probably 
comparatively few persons who have a long ancestry of 
abstainers, so that there is always the possibility of precipi- 
tating serious consequences. 

Protect human life from the use of alcoholic liquors 

It is this which constitutes the most serious and far-reaching 
fact of the alcohol problem of which the saloon is a part. 
Whether, as some believe, the alcoholic habit in any particular 
case is the result of an existing nervous defect, the known 
facts of heredity demand that human life should be protected 



3 o THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

at least from the inducement to drink which the saloon 
affords, and from the constant appeal to drink which an 
organized traffic is making in endeavoring to build up its 
business. The problem of what to do with the weak and the 
defective already existing is even now almost overwhelming. 
It is the part of prudence and wise "trusteeship" to protect 
life against even the possibility of any further deterioration 
where alcohol may be responsible for it. 

The results of prohibition 

That prohibition of the liquor traffic does offer this protec- 
tion of life against such deterioration is the testimony of 
experience. In a letter, replying to an inquiry for facts about 
the conditions in the homes in Kansas, Professor William 
A. McKeever, of the University of Kansas, states: 

"Parents with alcoholic habits are practically un- 
known in this State. I travel much about the State 
and do not know of a single case. Have made special 
inquiry here and can find none. I wonder if you 
can realize the meaning of this?" 

Some Pertinent Questions 

Why is human life of value? 

How far are the enemies of the use of liquor placing too 
high a value upon it? 

In what respect is the present generation responsible for 
the future welfare of the race? 

Why has an adult who is incapable of producing normal 
children no moral right, to have offspring? 

Should a license be granted to any institution to interfere 
with the welfare of the race? 

What effect does physical degeneracy have upon moral and 
intellectual development? 

To what extent is it interfering with an individual's per- 
sonal liberty to prevent him from drinking that which will 
seriously injure his offspring? 



EFFECT UPON RACE WELFARE 31 

What amount of license revenue will repay the birth of a 
degenerate child? 

To what extent is degeneracy due to alcohol ? 

How safe is moderate drinking? 

Why are good homes important from the standpoint of 
race welfare? 

Why should the prospective mother of a Xazirite child be 
free from strong drink? 

Class Discussion 

Follow these three general lines of thought : 

The concern which all men should feel for the welfare of 
the race. A God-given destiny is to be worked out. Human 
life is precious. 

Race welfare demands the birth of physically perfect chil- 
dren. The present generation is the ''trustee'' of this priceless 
"germ of life." Parenthood is the greatest of professions. 
To safeguard parenthood is a social obligation. 

Alcohol corrupts the human stock. Its influence causes 
degeneracy. Because of alcohol, future children are damned 
to physical inferiority, deformity, idiocy, feeble-mindedness, 
and premature death. 

What Our Class Can Do 

Visit local institutions which care for feeble-minded or 
other degenerates, and make reports to the class. 

Have members report concrete cases of the influence of 
alcohol upon children. 

Arrange a publicity campaign on the effects of alcohol. 
In preparation for this campaign write the Scientific Tem- 
perance Federation, 23 Trull Street, Boston, Mass., or the 
Poster Committee, 11 Mason Street, Cambridge, Mass., or 
the American Issue Publishing Company, Westerville, Ohio, 
for samples and price lists of posters. A poster campaign 
can be made very effective and the cost is small. Never let 
the church bulletin board stand idle. 



LESSON IV 
CRIME AND THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC 

The Scripture Reference 

For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, 
And of the fields of Gomorrah : 
Their grapes are grapes of gall, 
Their clusters are bitter: 
Their wine is the poison of serpents, 
And the cruel venom of asps. 

— Deuteronomy 32. 32, ^s- 

Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler; 
And whosoever erreth thereby is not wise. 

— Proverbs 20. 1. 

Be not deceived ; God is not mocked : for whatso- 
ever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he 
that soweth unto his own flesh shall of the flesh reap 
corruption; but he that soweth unto the Spirit shall 
of the Spirit reap eternal life. — Galatians 6. 7, 8. 

Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay 
field to field, till there be no room, and ye be made to 
dwell alone in the midst of the land ! In mine ears 
saith Jehovah of hosts, Of a truth many houses shall 
be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant. 
For ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and 
a homer of seed shall yield but an ephah. Woe unto 
them that rise up early in the morning, that they may 
follow strong drink; that tarry late into the night, 
till wine inflame them ! And the harp and the lute, 
the tabret and the pipe, and wine, are in their feasts; 
but they regard not the work of Jehovah, neither 
have they considered the operation of his hands. 
Therefore my people are gone into captivity for lack 
of knowledge ; and their honorable men are famished, 
and their multitude are parched with thirst. There- 
fore Sheol hath enlarged its desire, and opened its 
32 



CRIME AND THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC 33 

mouth without measure ; and their glory, and their 
multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth 
among them, descend into it. And the mean man is 
bowed down, and the great man is humbled, and the 
eyes of the lofty are humbled : but Jehovah of hosts 
is exalted in justice, and God the Holy One is sancti- 
fied in righteousness. Then shall the lambs feed as 
in their pasture, and the waste places of the fat ones 
shall wanderers eat. Woe unto them that draw 
iniquity with cords of falsehood, and sin as it were 
with a cart rope ; that say, Let him make speed, let 
him hasten his work, that we may see it ; and let the 
counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and 
come, that we may know it ! Woe unto them that 
call evil good, and good evil ; that put darkness for 
light, and light for darkness ; that put bitter for sweet, 
and sweet for bitter ! Woe unto them that are wise 
in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight ! 
Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and 
men of strength to mingle strong drink: that justify 
the wicked for a bribe, and take away the righteous- 
ness of the righteous from him ! Therefore as the 
tongue of fire devoureth the stubble, and as the dry 
grass sinketh down in the flame, so their root shall 
be as rottenness and their blossom shall go up as 
dust; because they have rejected the law of Jehovah 
of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of 
Israel. — Isaiah 5. 8-24. 

The Lesson 
What is crime? 

In a broad sense, crime is defined as "some act or omission 
in respect to which legal punishment may be inflicted upon 
the person who is in default whether by acting or omitting 
to act." It is an act or omission injuriously affecting the 
whole community, prejudicing public rights, which acts or 
omissions are punishable by law. A course of conduct is 
frequently considered as "criminal" which constitutes no 
technical violation of law. 

A "criminal" act 

While it is true that many acts which involve no violation 



34 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

of the law are commonly regarded as "criminal" in many 
localities, it is also true that many technical violations of 
law or ordinance cannot be said to be criminal in their 
character. Such matters as obstructing the highway, per- 
mitting a chimney to give forth excessive smoke, speeding 
a motor, or a breach of building laws, while technical viola- 
tions of the law, cannot properly be termed as "criminal" 
acts. 

"Felony" and "misdemeanor 3 ' 

In legal circles of all civilized nations the term "crime" 
has a much narrower sense and nearly corresponds to the 
term "felony," punishable with death or a term in a penal 
institution as distinguished from some offense referred to as 
a "misdemeanor," punishable with a fine or imprisonment in 
a local jail. Legal writers distinguish these two classes of 
offenses as mala in se (wrong in itself) as against mala 
prohiba (wrong prohibited). 

Criminal and civil law 

For the most part, offenses against the individual are now 
considered as offenses against the sovereign. In America, 
the people are the sovereign power, so prosecutions for both 
crimes and misdemeanors are brought by and in the name of 
the people. In many cases, criminal and civil law overlap so 
that while the people prosecute a man for murder, the 
victim's widow may also sue the same man for damages. 
The wrong inflicted is described by the legal term "tort." 
In most States, as a matter of "torts," the wife of the 
inebriate may bring damage suit against the liquor dealer for 
depriving her of her support by debauching her bread-winner. 

The liquor traffic promotes crime 

It is a matter of common knowledge wherever alcoholic 
liquor is sold and used in any considerable degree for 
beverage purposes that a large volume of crime and misde- 



CRIME AND THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC 35 

rneanors, as well as offenses termed torts, result therefrom. 
As a matter of fact, all legislation throughout the world 
seeking to curtail or regulate the traffic in intoxicating liquors 
is based upon this common knowledge : that the beverage use 
of intoxicants naturally leads to crime and disorder. Laws 
against selling liquor at late hours of night, laws against 
selling liquor in places remote from police protection, laws 
forbidding the selling of liquor on legal holidays, are all 
based on the theory that the liquor traffic promotes crime, 
and their purpose is to reduce such crime to the lowest 
practicable minimum. Laws against selling liquor to a drunken 
man are based on the probability that additional liquor may 
lead him to commit some crime. Laws against selling liquor 
to Indians arise from the fear that such liquor may lead to 
crimes, especially crimes of violence. Laws authorizing 
mayors of cities to close all saloons in times of riots or on 
occasions of great disasters are all based on the theory that 
the sale of liquor at such times is especially provocative of 
further violence and crime. 

Commerce in useful things 

All legislation, State, national, and local, respecting com- 
merce in useful things is based on the desire to promote 
and encourage such traffic. The Department of Commerce 
and Labor has been established to promote and encourage 
commerce and trade in useful products and manufactures. 
Consular and diplomatic agents are scattered throughout the 
world to promote such traffic. 

Liquor traffic not useful 

All legislation respecting the liquor traffic, on the contrary, 
national, State, and local, is based upon the proposition that 
the traffic promotes disorder, that it is productive of crime, 
and must be handicapped and curtailed. Even the license 
laws promoted by the United States Brewers' Association, 
the Model License League, and kindred organizations of 



36 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

persons engaged in the traffic itself, spring from the same 
basic principles — that the traffic is productive of crime, and 
the public good therefore requires that it be curtailed, -that 
it be surrounded by such restrictions and limitations as will 
reduce these evils to the lowest possible minimum. 

Two classes of legislation 

Anyone can readily discern the underlying distinction be- 
tween these two classes of legislation by a mental attempt to 
imagine the current liquor laws as being applied to any item 
found in a common grocery. A law forbidding the selling 
of potatoes to minors, a law forbidding the selling of fruit 
to one who is excessively fond of fruit, a law forbidding the 
selling of bananas to one who had just eaten a lot of bananas, 
a law forbidding the selling of flour after ten o'clock at 
night, laws compelling grocers to give bonds that their salt 
will not lead to violence and disorder — any such legislation 
in reality applied to any such item would create laughter in 
a morgue. Yet such laws are seriously considered and more 
or less enforced as to the traffic in intoxicating liquors, simply 
because they are based upon the common desire to restrain 
the traffic, to reduce the liquor consumption to the lowest 
practicable minimum. 

The meaning of the license policy 

So far, the underlying reasons for license laws and pro- 
hibition laws are identical. Both are based on a desire to 
eliminate the traffic so far as practicable. It is desired to 
eliminate to the limit this traffic because of the common 
knowledge that it promotes crime, distress, disorder, and 
expense to the tax-paying community. Those promoting the 
license policy recognize frankly that the saloon is a great 
source of crime, that it should be curtailed, restricted, regu- 
lated so as to reduce this factor to a minimum. It is urged 
that the traffic cannot be wholly eliminated, and that it is 
best to allow it to continue under strict regulation and levy 



CRIME AND THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC 37 

upon it heavy taxes or license fees so as to compensate the 
community, at least in part, for the expense attending the 
disorder, poverty, and crime growing out of the business. 
Why should not the traffic be compelled to bear some of the 
burden heaped upon the taxpayers by virtue of the liquor- 
selling and its resulting crime? 

Prohibition of the saloon 

On the other hand, those who would prohibit the traffic 
freely admit that prohibition of the traffic will not totally 
eliminate drink or the clandestine traffic. It is urged that 
prohibition of the saloon should not be expected to accom- 
plish what no prohibition law in the history of the world 
has ever accomplished. Murder and theft have been pro- 
hibited by law, which law has been overwhelmingly supported 
by public opinion since the dawn of history; and yet the 
newspapers now chronicle violations of these laws daily all 
over the w r orld. 

Why not license murder? 

It would only subject man to ridicule to make the same 
proposition regarding theft and murder that is made re- 
garding the liquor traffic. Such crimes have always been 
committed and the community might as well secure some 
revenue from it in order to pay the expense of criminal pro- 
ceedings on account thereof ! But every thoughtful man 
knows that vastly less murders and thefts are committed 
under a prohibition policy than would be committed under 
a license regime. 

The saloon responsible for crime 

This principle is not disputed as to theft, murder, or any- 
thing else except the traffic in intoxicating liquors, and it is 
disputed in this respect chiefly by the liquor dealers them- 
selves or by persons who profit by the traffic. In setting 
forth its claims, the saloon usually puts forth as spokesmen 



38 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

renters of saloon property, criminal lawyers who thrive on 
the saloon business, business men who sell their goods largely 
to saloons, coopers, bottlemakers, ice men, cigarmakers, brass 
manufacturers, and the like. The crooked politician who 
seeks office through the saloon votes is diligent in urging 
theories of this sort, yet none of these seriously combat the 
statement that the saloon is largely responsible for crime. 

Legitimate uses of alcohol 

Those who would prohibit the traffic in intoxicants for 
beverage purposes would not interfere with, but would en- 
courage, the use of alcohol for mechanical, industrial, manu- 
facturing, and scientific purposes. They demand only that 
the State take precisely the same course toward alcohol as 
is taken toward impure meat and poisonous drugs. They 
would encourage the use of spoiled meat for the manu- 
facture of soap, fertilizer, and for other useful purposes, but 
would prohibit the sale for eating purposes. Intoxicants, 
being far more dangerous to the public health and morals, 
should stand on precisely the same footing before the law. 

Difficulty in determining percentage 

Inasmuch as it is conceded that the sale of intoxicants 
results in a sufficient amount of crime to warrant the 
restraining hand of the law, the exact percentage of such 
crime caused by the saloon is only a matter of academic 
interest. Just what this percentage may be is largely a matter 
of conjecture, and investigations into this subject vary with 
the viewpoint and the methods of the investigator. As 
conspicuous example, Harry K. Thaw, while inflamed with 
drink, shot and killed Stanford White. Thaw had ample 
opportunity to kill White after he knew of the grievance and 
when he was sober. But not until he became heated with 
wine did he fire the fatal bullet. In order to escape the 
electric chair, his attorneys proved him to be insane. They 
knew he was not so much insane as intoxicated. 



CRIME AND THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC 39 

The reputed cause of this shooting might be variously set 
down according to the notion of the investigator. One might 
attribute it to insanity; another might attribute it to tem- 
porary passion at a fancied or real wrong; another might 
properly say that had it not been for the wine which inflamed 
Thaw on the fatal night, the tragedy would never have 
happened. 

Approximate per cent 

Factors of this sort enter into most studies of the per- 
centage of crime due to the saloon, which naturally lead to 
varied results. It is very rare, however, that an experienced 
officer of the law whose life is devoted to dealing with 
criminals will place the percentage due to drink at less than 
fifty per cent. The great majority of such men will place 
the proportion at from seventy-five to ninety per cent. Some 
will place it even higher. One or two concrete illustrations 
show the trend. 

In addressing naval cadets, Emperor William II of Ger- 
many said : "I can assure you that during the twenty-two 
years of my reign, I have made the observation that the 
greater number of criminal cases submitted to me for adjudi- 
cation, up to nine tenths, are traceable to the consequences 
of alcohol/' 

Dr. T. D. Crothers, Superintendent of the Walnut Lodge 
Hospital, in Hartford, Conn., says: "All authorities agree 
that from seventy-five to ninety per cent of all criminality is 
caused by the abuse of alcohol." 

In Sweden, the subject of the intimate relation between 
crime and alcohol was seen to be of such vast importance 
that it was made a matter of investigation by the State in 
connection with the medical profession. The number of cases 
investigated was twenty-four thousand three hundred and 
ninety-eight. Of this number, seventeen thousand three hun- 
dred and seventy-four, that is, 71.2 per cent, connected their 
crime with the use of alcohol. 



4 o THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

The case of San Francisco 

In places where the taking of alcohol is prohibited the 
number of arrests for crime falls at once. This was strik- 
ingly seen during the terrible earthquake at San Francisco, 
when Mayor Schmitz "issued an order forbidding any person 
to sell, give away, or drink alcoholic liquors. The result was 
that with thousands of homeless people in the city and thou- 
sands of visitors coming into the city, the arrests from April 
20 to July 4, 1906, were from two to six per day. In all the 
turmoil and the confusion of the tens of thousands of home- 
less people, and the influx of thousands of visitors, perfect 
order prevailed, and the police force, according to their own 
statement, had nothing to do. . . . The first Monday after 
the reopening of the saloon in San Francisco (July 9, 1906) 
there were seventy-four victims before the police courts, as 
against five on the previous Monday; seventy-two on Friday, 
as against two on the previous Friday; and the second Mon- 
day one hundred and thirteen, as against three or four the 
second Monday before reopening. . . . Extra policemen were 
asked to protect the defenseless refugee women and children, 
and extra guards were stationed at the camps to protect the 
homeless." 

The Webb lazv 

The Webb Law, enacted by Congress in 1913, has taken 
from the liquor dealers their principal means of selling the 
licensed saloon product in no-license communities, and pro- 
hibition is rapidly becoming more and more effective by 
reason thereof. The entire logic of the situation calls for 
ultimate national prohibition, for which an active campaign 
is now under way. 

Some Pertinent Questions 

Can liquor-selling for beverage purposes be justly looked 
upon as injuriously affecting the community? 



CRIME AND THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC 41 

Does it prejudice public rights? 

May we consider it a "felony" ? 

From the standpoint of the saloon, what is the significance 
of the fact that in America the people are the sovereign? 

Why is it that all legislation seeks to curtail or regulate 
the liquor traffic rather than promote and protect it? 

Do men engaged in the saloon business generally agree that 
their business is productive of crime? 

What else can their advocacy of license measures mean? 

Why should it be silly to enact a law forbidding the sale 
of potatoes to minors? 

Can the liquor traffic be wholly eliminated by legal enact- 
ment ? 

If not, does it follow that it should be licensed? 

Why not license, rather than prohibit, murder? 

How much revenue was collected on the liquor drunk by 
Thaw before he killed White? What did it finally cost the 
government ? 

In Germany, what is the relation between alcohol and crime ? 

In what sense is wine a mocker? 

W T hat woes follow inevitably upon the use of strong drink? 

Class Discussion 

Bring out clearly the meaning of "crime." 

Show that the license system is based upon the general 
assumption that the saloon causes crime and that therefore 
t should help carry this burden rather than let the taxpayer 
do it. 

Lead the class to the conclusion that the saloon is a 
:riminal institution and therefore should not be licensed. 

What Our Class Can Do 

Urge citizens to join in this careful study of the liquor 
raffic. 

Collect local information from the local Court and Police 
Records showing the relation of the saloon to crime and the 



42 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

ultimate cost of crime in excess of the revenue from the 
liquor business. 

Arrange with the pastor for an anti-saloon Sunday evening 
mass meeting. 

Have a member of the class take a daily newspaper and, 
remembering that fifty per cent of the crime is caused by 
drink, cut out all of those parts of the paper that tell about 
the liquor business and its results. Then hold the paper up 
before the class. 






LESSON V 

THE SALOON AND THE 
SOCIAL EVIL 

The Scripture Reference 

Owe no man anything, save to love one another : 
for he that loveth his neighbor hath fulfilled the law. 
For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt 
not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not covet, 
and if there be any other commandment, it is summed 
up in this word, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor 
as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: love 
therefore is the fulfillment of the law. 

And this, knowing the season, that already it is 
time for you to awake out of sleep : for now is 
salvation nearer to us than when we first believed. 
The night is far spent, and the day is at hand : let 
us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let 
us put on the armor of light. Let us walk becom- 
ingly, as in the day ; not in reveling and drunkenness, 
not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and 
jealousy. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts 
thereof. — Romans 13. 8-14. 



The Lesson 
The presence of the parental instinct 

In every normal individual there are animal instincts and 
impulses that must be regulated before moral conduct is 
possible. Self-control means the regulation of these inner 
forces that go to make up the living, active self. It is 
necessary first to have in mind an ideal of right behavior 
and then to make the innate impulses conform thereto. The 
parental instinct with its accompanying sexual emotions and 
social interests is one of the most fundamental and powerful 

43 



44 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

of these life forces. It comes to maturity during adolescence 
and it is during these critical years that self-control is most 
imperative. When properly directed these natural forces lead 
on to the most refined and exalted experience of life. But 
they are capable of being prostituted to the most ignoble ends. 

The first step in the loss of virtue 

But the use of alcohol leads directly and inevitably to the 
disintegration of these higher centers of control. Thus pas- 
sions come to expression without restraint. The ones natu- 
rally most persistent and powerful crowd the others aside. 
During youth and early manhood and womanhood this 
parental instinct — to which the Creator has given enough 
vitality to cause a parent to watch over and care for a child 
during twenty years of immaturity — and its accompanying 
emotions are especially vigorous. The first mild stage of 
intoxication, in which free play is given to the emotions, is 
thus far more dangerous than is ordinarily supposed. It is 
probable that in the United States and Europe the first glass 
has been to thousands of fallen women the first step in the 
direction of loss of virtue. 

Liquor sold in dance halls 

In a carefully prepared letter dated October 16, 1913, Mrs. 
Joseph Tilton Bowen, President of the Juvenile Protective 
Association of Chicago, writes : 

"I do not know whether you are at all familiar 
with the investigation made by the Juvenile Protective 
Association of Chicago in regard to these dance halls. 
The Association found that the most popular attrac- 
tion for young people in Chicago is the dance hall, as 
dancing affords an outlet for the emotions of youth 
and is a safety valve for its surplus energy. 

"The Association investigated three hundred and 
twenty-eight dance halls. It found that one hundred 
and ninety had saloons connected directly with the 
halls; that liquor was sold in two hundred and forty 
out of the three hundred and twenty-eight; that the 



THE SALOON AND THE SOCIAL EVIL 4 5 

law forbidding the sale of liquor to minors was 
violated in one hundred and forty-six. It also found 
that eighty-six thousand young people attended these 
dance halls on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays 
— the evenings when the dances are generally held — 
and that the majority of the boys were between six- 
teen and eighteen years of age and the girls between 
fourteen and sixteen. 

"In the two hundred and forty halls where liquor 
was sold, practically all the boys showed signs of 
intoxication by twelve o'clock, possibly because it is 
almost impossible to get a drink of water in these 
halls. The conditions existing in many of the dance 
halls and adjoining saloons transform the innocent 
desire for dancing and social enjoyment into drunken- 
ness, vice, and debauchery. Saloon keepers and pros- 
titutes are in many cases the only chaperons, and 
in a majority of the places even the young girls and 
boys are plied with alcohol and with the suggestion 
of vice until dances cease to be recreation and become 
flagrant immorality. 

"The dance-hall keeper lives and thrives by the sale 
of liquor; consequently, the dances are short — four 
to five minutes — and the intermissions long — fifteen 
to twenty minutes. In the halls where liquor is not 
sold the intermissions are short and the dances long. 
Is not this an argument for divorcing the sale of 
liquor from the dance halls?" 

A deplorable use of alcohol 

God has given to every normal man and woman adequate 
self-restraint and safety from ordinary temptation. Those 
who are interested in the financial profits that may be 
obtained from the increase of the social evil know this to be 
true. And so alcoholic drinks are deliberately used "to 
poison the mind and conscience in order to make it easy to 
commit crime, particularly immoralities of a sexual nature." 

Dr. J. M. Shaller, of Denver, says: 

"Probably the most deplorable use to which alcohol 
is put is its employment as a means to ruin girls. If 
it were not a narcotic poison it would not and could 
not be used for this purpose. It is not necessary to 



46 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

go into details as to the many young girls who lose 
their virtue by first being poisoned by champagne. 
It is impossible to lead many women astray without 
the use of liquors. ,, 

A noted lady physician in the Royal Free Hospital of 
London, says : 

"There is no doubt that most of the women who 
compose that sad army of the fallen have reached this 
state either because they were intemperate, or have 
become intemperate from the exigencies of their 
miserable life. Many girls owe their first fall from 
virtue to the casual glass of fiery, unsound wine or 
spirit given to them as a treat on some bank holiday 
or other convivial occasion." 

Alcoholic liquors and morality 

According to the 1909 Report of the Inspector under the 
Inebriate Acts (Great Britain) on eight hundred and sixty- 
five immoral women in British reformatories, forty per cent 
of the immorality was found to be due solely to drink. Dr. 
Sanger of Blackwell's Island found that out of two thousand 
fallen women 82.5 per cent were addicted to drink; 46.5 per 
cent had drinking mothers ; 61.5 per cent had drinking fathers. 

The saloon and commercialised prostitution 

In the Report of the Massachusetts "Commission for the 
Investigation of the White Slave Traffic, So Called/' it is 
stated that "in the larger cities of Massachusetts the most 
flagrant and open expression of the commercialized aspect of 
prostitution is in connection with certain cafes and saloons. 
These places are known to be very profitable from a com- 
mercial point of view. The reason for their existence is the 
profit from the sale of alcoholic liquor to the prospective 
customers of the prostitutes." 

Modern life and customs 

The shrewd, practical, and insidious aggressiveness of these 



THE SALOON AND THE SOCIAL EVIL 47 

vice-producing liquor sellers is far more destructive now than 
it would have been in the earlier days of our nation's history. 
The conditions under which their business is carried on 
make success relatively easy. "The changes in habits and 
customs brought about by modern industries and modern 
urban life must be recognized. In former times girls worked 
at home under their mothers' watchful eyes, and seldom went 
abroad unless accompanied by women of mature years. Chil- 
dren were held in strict discipline. The majority of families 
lived in small communities, and boys and girls helped on 
the farm, in the household, and in other home industries. 
Until late adolescence, when character and habits were 
formed, children selected their associates and found their 
interests and recreations in the home, the church, and the 
neighborhood, under the watchful eyes of their parents. Reli- 
gion was a controlling influence over conduct. 

"Present conditions are vastly different. Modern invention 
and business methods have transferred industry and its 
products from the home to the factory, the big store and 
the office. The great majority of our people live in large 
towns and cities. Young people work, and in many instances 
are obliged to live, away from home. The early economic 
independence of working girls brings temptations, and makes 
them intolerant of restraint. It has become the custom of 
young women to go about freely, unaccompanied. Our youth 
of both sexes are accorded great freedom in the pursuit of 
pleasures." It is under such economic and social customs as 
these that the social evil has grown to be one of the most, 
if not the most, dangerous menace to American society. 

Local authorities inert 

After carefully investigating the relation between cafes 
and saloons and the white slave traffic, the Commission 
declared : 

"It is not easy to understand why the many im- 
moral cafes and saloons, openly and impudently used 



48 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

nightly and almost solely for the bargaining places of 
prostitutes and their customers, are allowed to exist 
in every city of any size in the State. An officer of 
the law not known to the habitues in any one house 
could obtain evidence which would justify the per- 
manent closing of any one of these places by the 
licensing authorities. 

"The separate booths, especially with drawn cur- 
tains, in cafes, restaurants, and saloons, should be 
absolutely forbidden. 

"It is within the power of local licensing authorities 
to remedy this evil. There should be some definitely 
constituted State authority charged with the responsi- 
bility of securing action if the local authorities are 
inert." 

The social evil and the saloon 

In the Report of the Vice Commission of Chicago on the 
Social Evil in Chicago, there occurs the following statement: 

"In the Commission's consideration and investiga- 
tion of the Social Evil, it found that the most con- 
spicuous and important element in connection with 
the same, next to the house of prostitution itself, was 
the saloon, and the most important financial interest, 
next to the business of prostitution, was the liquor 
business. As a contributory influence to immorality 
and the business of prostitution there is no interest 
so dangerous and so powerful in the City of Chicago. 
The Brewery Companies, the Liquor Dealers' Pro- 
tective Association of Illinois, and the Wholesale 
Liquor Dealers' Association have all gone on record 
as in favor of the elimination of the sale of liquor 
in connection with prostitution." 

Social evil encouraged in saloons 

This Commission continues its report by showing that 
the corrupters of society are protected by liquor interests. 
"In spite of this fact hundreds of prostitutes (nine hundred 
and twenty-eight counted by the Commission investigators) 
are permitted and encouraged in no less than two hundred 
and thirty-six saloons, which were investigated by the Com- 



THE SALOON AND THE SOCIAL EVIL 49 

mission. Many of these disorderly saloons are under the 
control of brewery companies as will be seen later in the 
report. These saloons are frequented by immoral women who 
openly solicit for drinks and for immoral purposes and re- 
ceive the protection of the saloon keepers and interests." 

Separation of the saloon and social evil 

The members of the Commission gave it as their judg- 
ment that in the interest of the suppression of the social 
evil, its connection with the drinking places should be 
severed : 

"The Commission is strongly convinced that there 
should be immediate and complete separation of the 
saloon and the social evil and that no house of assig- 
nation or prostitution or rooms above or adjacent 
should be allowed in connection with a saloon. 

"Bawdy houses found by the Commission were 
appalling enough, but the abuse of liquor-selling privi- 
leges is equal in viciousness through its open and 
alluring flaunting of vice and degeneracy, and in its 
destruction of the moral character of men who fre- 
quent the saloon primarily for drink only.'* 

The men higher up 

It is not the saloon keeper and the cafe proprietor alone 
who are responsible for this deliberate use of liquor for 
shameful purposes. The men higher up in the liquor busi- 
ness are known to be financially interested in such resorts. 
The report of the Chicago Vice Commission shows that 
"some of the disorderly saloons are under the control or 
favor of certain brewers. ,, "An investigation with reference 
to two hundred and thirty-six disorderly saloons shows that 
representatives of fourteen brewing companies are on the 
surety bonds for sixty-three of these saloons. In addition 
there are a number of individuals on the surety bonds for 
other disorderly saloons who are also connected with brewing 
companies but are not given as being representatives." 



50 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

Liquor advertisements 

In a well-known southern city, which is notorious because 
of the prevalence of the social evil, a pamphlet is published, 
giving information which makes it very easy for the stranger 
or uninitiated to find his way to moral death. This book is 
distributed in a certain saloon conveniently located, that is, 
near to the most immoral section of the city. "The directory, 
plain and formal, runs down the right-hand pages. On the 
left-hand pages are advertisements. The first twenty-five 
advertising pages," writes Will Irwin in Collier's Weekly, 
February, 1908, "set forth the virtues of Anheuser-Busch beer, 
I. W. Harper Rye Whiskey, and other liquors. For the 
rest of the way the advertisements are formal 'write-ups' of 
certain women in the quarter. In this mute book the saloon 
and vice proclaim their naked partnership." 

Conclusion 

The conclusion is unmistakable. That the social evil has 
reached such alarming proportions is due to the fact that 
God-given instincts and impulses are not being subjected to 
normal moral control. The most prolific cause of this lack 
of self-restraint is alcohol taken in the form of various 
kinds of beverages. Places where liquor is sold — the saloon, 
the drinking cafe, and the dance hall — have come to be 
inseparably connected with this form of immorality. It is 
while in such places that the higher centers of moral control 
become dissipated. Saloons are used deliberately to foster 
the evil in its most degraded form. The easy and most 
frequented road to loss of virtue is the social glass. The 
habit of using intoxicating liquors leads to the habit of 
social evil. 

Some Pertinent Questions 

Which of the human instincts becomes perverted in the 
social evil? 

What is usually the first step toward loss of virtue? 



THE SALOON AND THE SOCIAL EVIL 51 

Is society responsible for the protection of young people 
from social temptation? Why? 

What is the danger when liquor is sold in dance halls? 

What motive leads men and women to sell alcoholic drinks 
to reduce the moral self-control of young people? 

What is the opinion of the Chicago Vice Commission 
regarding the social aspect of the saloon? 

How are saloon keepers in this deplorable business pro- 
tected? 

In order to get rid of the social evil, what must be done 
with the saloon and liquor-selling cafe? 

Where in Massachusetts have the most flagrant expressions 
of commercialized vice been found? 

How is it that social temptations are more apt to lead to 
sin under modern conditions than in the early history of 
our country? 

What effect would a sensitive and alert public opinion have 
upon the enforcement of the law? 

In what ways are brewers interested in saloons and for 
these socially sinful purposes? 

In view of the relation of the liquor business to the social 
evil, what should be the attitude of those interested in the 
moral welfare of the community toward that business? 

How does liquor affect the lusts of the flesh? 

Class Discussion 

Show in the first place the meaning of the parental instinct 
and love between the sexes for the elevation and refinement 
of man. 

But this noble end is not attainable unless moral self- 
control is exercised. 

Alcohol attacks these higher centers of self-control and 
thus permits these powerful life forces to become misdirected. 

The institutions that are interested in the sale of intoxi- 
cating liquors are thus inseparably connected with the social 
evil. 



52 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

Some manufacturers and retailers recognize this intimate 
relation between the two and deliberately encourage it, thereby 
making abnormal profits. 

What Our Class Can Do 

In many communities the great need is for intelligent efforts 
in enforcing laws already enacted making it a misdemeanor 
to foster the social evil in liquor-selling places. 

But in some States the necessary laws are not yet made. 

By every means the liquor business should be prevented 
from encouraging social vice. 



LESSON VI 

THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC AND THE 
PUBLIC SCHOOL 

The Scripture Reference 

And when the ten heard it, they began to be moved 
with indignation concerning James and John. And 
Jesus called them to him, and saith unto them, Ye 
know that they who are accounted to rule over the 
Gentiles lord it over them; and their great ones 
exercise authority over them. But it is not so among 
you : but whosoever would become great among you 
shall be your minister. — Mark 10. 41-43. 

It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor 
to do anything whereby thy brother stumbleth. — 
Romans 14. 21. 

The Lesson 
The value of an education 

There is coming to be an intense and widespread appre- 
ciation of the value — one might almost say, the necessity — 
of an education. Social relations are becoming more and 
more complex. Specialists are increasingly in demand. Un- 
skilled labor faces hardships that were unknown even twenty- 
five years ago. The body of available scientific information 
is rapidly extending and the trades are being revolutionized 
by it. Each new generation is increasingly dependent upon 
the system of public education as a means of preparation for 
life. Increasingly large appropriations are being made to 
maintain and equip the public schools. Without them, modern 
industrial, business, and social conditions could not be main- 

53 



54 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

tained. They are a necessary part of our national life. The 
State not only assumes the responsibility of providing a free 
elementary education to every boy and girl, it also makes 
attendance at school compulsory. 

The kind of pupils needed 

But no matter how efficient the public school may be, it 
cannot make efficient citizens without boys and girls. They 
are the "raw material" out of which the "finished product" 
is made. And the quality of this "finished product" depends 
very largely upon the quality of the "material" provided. 
Sound bodies, senses and mental faculties alert and naturally 
strong, adequate daily nourishment, healthful surroundings in 
which to grow, parents whose conduct is worthy of imitation, 
wholesome moral influences, freedom from excessive care 
and responsibility, all these should be the heritage of those 
children to whom alone the school can be of maximum 
service. A sickly or overburdened child is greatly handi- 
capped in getting an education. If attendance is irregular, 
the continuity of the lesson courses is broken and great 
hardships result. Teachers need the active and intelligently 
sympathetic cooperation of parents. The grade of work 
done in the public school is conditioned by the kind of boys 
and girls who attend. This fact is being recognized more 
and more, not only by educators and others immediately 
concerned with the process of education, but also by those to 
whom the "educated" youth applies for employment. 

Drink robs the child of health 

The British Journal of Inebriety for January, 1900, printed 
an instructive comparison prepared by Professor Demme of 
Berne. The record of one hundred and eighteen persons, the 
children of ten drunkards and of ten sober parents, whose 
family histories had been carefully investigated, was pre- 
pared with painstaking accuracy. The families lived in the 
same section and under similar conditions except for drink. 



LIQUOR TRAFFIC AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 55 



Children of Sober Parents 

Entirely normal 50 

Mentally feeble, by no 

means idiotic 2 

Died of general weakness 3 

Died of gastric catarrh. . 2 
Had chorea (so in 

original) . . . . 2 

Physical deformity 2 

61 
Of the sixty-one, five died 
in first twelve years. 



Children of Drunkards 

Entirely normal 9 

Idiots 8 

Had epileptic or convul- 
sive fits 13 

Became drunkards with 
complications of epi- 
lepsy and chorea 5 

Deaf mutes 2 

Physical deformity 3 

Dwarfs 5 

Died at, or soon after, 
birth 12 

57 
Of the fifty-seven, twenty- 
five died in infancy. 



Weak children because of alcohol 

Professor Taav Laitinen, of the University of Helsingfors, 
reports a comparison of children in fifty abstaining and fifty- 
nine drinking families in one village in Finland. In the ab- 
staining families, the weakly children were found to consti- 
tute 1.3 per cent; in the drinking families, 8.2 per cent. Of 
the children in the abstaining families, 18.5 per cent died 
while still children; in the drinking families, 24.8 per cent. 
Another study, of four hundred and forty-four children of 
one hundred and twenty alcoholic mothers, showed that 
33-7 per cent of the first born eighty children, fifty per cent 
of the second born eighty children, 52.6 per cent of the third 
born eighty children, 65.7 per cent of the fourth and fifth 
born one hundred and eleven children, and 72 per cent of 
the sixth to the tenth born ninety-three children died while 
babies. Of the living, 4.1 per cent were epileptic. 



The case of destitute children ' 
Children who are not properly clothed and nourished, whose 



56 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

bodies are not properly cared for, find it difficult to give that 
mental application which is necessary in securing an educa- 
tion. Bodily discomfort is one of the most effective of 
mental distractions. A child that is hungry or cold or whose 
skin is in a state of irritation finds it difficult, if not impos- 
sible, to study. The 1912 Bulletin of the North Carolina 
State Board of Health states that liquor causes forty-five per 
cent of destitution among children. Another careful survey 
found that out of fifty-one hundred and thirty-six children, 
45-97 P er cent "owed their destitution to the intemperate 
habits of their parents or others. ,, The Associated Charities 
of Boston found that out of three hundred and fifty-two able- 
bodied men who failed to support their families, two hundred 
and forty-three, or sixty-nine per cent, were drunkards. It is 
estimated that seventy-five per cent of the misery of children 
is due to alcohol. 

The child's need of sympathy 

It is a common saying that there is no royal road to 
learning. It is up hill all the way. A child needs the help, 
encouragement, and the intelligent interest of its parents to 
make school work light. Where liquor drinking is prevalent, 
it has been observed that this parental interest is deadened. 
In communities where saloons have been voted out the 
parents have had more pride in and ambition for their 
children. The cooperation of father and mother to help 
their children makes a vast difference in the educational 
progress of pupils. During three years of prohibition in 
North Carolina the attendance in the public schools increased 
four per cent, the school term was lengthened, and the school 
appropriations were almost double that of the "wet" years. 

The distance between the saloon and the school 

"A sufficient indication of the direct and immediately harm- 
ful effect of the saloon upon the School is the one limitation 



LIQUOR TRAFFIC AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 57 

imposed upon the saloon by almost every license law, namely 
that no saloon shall be within a given distance of any school. 
Surely if the saloon were a benefit to education, it could 
not be too near the schoolhouse. Has a law ever been heard 
of which decreed how many hundred feet apart should be 
the church and the home or the home and the school ? If 
the saloon be bad for the school two hundred feet from a 
schoolhouse, how much better can it be one mile away?" 

The ethics of the saloon 

Some time ago a school teacher reported to the New York 
Academy of Medicine the fact that one of the boys under 
her charge had come into school drunk. He had been induced 
to confess where he had bought the liquor. A card that he 
pulled out of his pocket told the story. Every time the boy 
got a drink of beer a hole was punched in the card and a 
prize was given by the saloon keeper to the boy who, at the 
end of the month, had the largest number of holes in his 
card. 

The child of fourteen years 

The fourteen-year-old child of parents who patronize the 
saloon usually has to take upon himself some of the duties 
that naturally belong to the parents but which are not ful- 
filled by them because of drink. These added burdens — 
whether they are of those of earning money or of taking 
care of younger children or sick members of the family — 
seriously interfere with the getting of an education. Statistics 
have shown that where the saloon has been voted out the 
school attendance of children over fourteen years of age has 
increased from five to twenty-five per cent. The beverage 
liquor traffic discourages that thrift and frugality that is so 
essential in providing children of this age with the oppor- 
tunity to attend school. The Sixth Annual Report of the 
Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor showed that 
"children under fifteen years of age supply by their labor 



58 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

from one eighth to one sixth of the total family earnings.'' 
A boy cannot be in a factory and a school at the same time. 
And the saloon usually drives him to the factory. 

Illustrations from Texas, Indiana, and Chicago 

The 1914 year-book of the Anti-Saloon League gives the 
following instance of the result of the abolition of the saloon: 

"In Texas an investigation has been instituted as 
to the effect of saloon abolition on the attendance of 
children in public schools. Twenty-six wet towns 
were investigated, and twenty-five dry ones. It was 
discovered that nearly one sixth of the children in 
the wet towns are kept out of the public schools by 
the saloons. 

"It is found that, taking the State as a whole, 
approximately fifty thousand children in Texas are 
robbed by the saloons of that State of a public school 
education." 

In Indiana it was found that out of every one hundred 
children of school age, in the "wet" counties, 14.3 per cent 
were kept out of school on account of the saloon. The total 
was forty-three thousand five hundred and nine. 

In Chicago, with its splendid educational system and its 
seventy-one hundred and fifty-two saloons, only fifty-six per 
cent of the children are found in the public schools. 

How the saloon affects the high school 

The Natick, Massachusetts, Handbook for 1913 shows that 
the average attendance of the Natick High School during 
license years, 1902-7, was two hundred and fifty-one, during 
no license years, 1907-12, two hundred and seventy-six. Dur- 
ing the license years, as shown in the following tables, there 
was an actual decrease of attendance. But there was a gain 
of eighty-three pupils during the five no-license years, an 
average gain of twenty-five pupils per year or ten per cent 
for each of the no-license years over the license years. 



D upils 


No-license years 


Pupils 


246 


1907-8 


233 


260 


1908-9 


264 


261 


1909-10 


264 


248 


1910-11 


303 


242 


1911-12 


316 




Nov. 1, 1912 


379 



LIQUOR TRAFFIC AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 59 

Yet the population of the town had not increased 

License years 
1902-3 
1903-4 
1904-5 
1905-6 
1906-7 

In the entire State of Massachusetts, in the year 1910, there 
were seventeen high-school pupils per one thousand popu- 
lation in license cities and towns, while in no-license cities 
and towns there were twenty-three. In California the ratio 
is that of twenty-eight in "wet" territory to thirty-seven in 
"dry." 

Drink lowers the moral tone 

School teachers have noticed that children coming from 
homes of drunkenness are often morally unfit to take up the 
daily schoolroom tasks. They are frequently sulky, reckless, 
and despondent, easily irritated, and unsteady. Moreover, 
their pernicious influences spread to the other children. 
Referring to some of the children who do not attend school, 
a teacher in Lynn, Mass., said : 

"We send the truant officer for them but he finds 
them without shoes or other decent clothing, with 
blackened eyes and bruised faces, or trying to act as 
father or mother for the younger children when their 
parents have forgotten them and are on a drunk. If 
such children come to school, they are faint, hungry, 
dirty, uncared for, surly and irritable, thoroughly 
despondent, unable to apply their minds to the 
lessons." 

Alcohol and tuberculosis 

In the investigation made by Professor Von Bunge of 
Basel, the details of which are given in an earlier lesson on 
"The Use of Alcohol a Source of Poverty," alcohol was 



60 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

shown to be "the most active cooperator of the deadly germ 
of tuberculosis." 21.27 per cent of the children whose fathers 
were confirmed drunkards were found to be tuberculous. 
Thus the great white plague makes fearful inroads into the 
system of public education. To protect the children who are 
physically sound and to aid those in whom incipient tuber- 
culosis is found, many communities are conducting open-air 
schools. But no amount of fresh air can counteract the 
terrible weaknesses and liability to disease which result 
from alcoholic parentage. Children born of such parents 
begin their struggle for an education under a heavy handicap. 
In the interest of the health of school children, the drinking 
of alcoholic beverages should be stopped. 

Retarded development of children of alcoholic 
parentage 

One of the most difficult, and yet the most important, tasks 
of educators is that of providing in the various grades lessons 
that are suited to the capacities of the pupils. Children do 
not develop at a uniform rate. This fact greatly increases 
the teacher's problem of the adaptation of the lesson material. 
The presence, in a school, of children of alcoholic parents 
increases these difficulties. For such children are abnormally 
slow in developing. A suggestion of the retarding influence 
of drink is seen in a study made of twenty-one hundred and 
twenty-five children. Of those whose parents were abstainers, 
72.5 per cent had cut teeth at eight months of age, while of 
those of parents who took daily more than one glass of beer 
only 57.7 per cent had cut teeth at that age. 

Muncie drunk and Muncie sober 

At a church meeting in Muncie, Indiana, recently a teacher 
reported certain differences she had observed in the condition 
of her pupijs before and after the closing of the saloons. 

When saloons were running, children came to school too 
hungry and cold to work until they were fed. There were 



LIQUOR TRAFFIC AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 61 

little children of six and eight who had been without food 
one and two days, children in the bitterest weather without 
underwear, warm wraps, or whole shoes ; there were frozen 
fingers and toes to be treated ; there were little faces dis- 
colored by blows, all because of drinking fathers, and some- 
times because of drinking mothers. 

After the saloons were closed not one child complained of 
hunger; only one coat and pair of shoes had to be furnished, 
and these to a fatherless boy ; there have been no frozen 
hands or feet ; the children are comfortably clothed, even to 
mittens ; they furnish their own books, which many did not 
do before, and are regular in attendance. Their very air and 
manner is changed. Instead of cringing as if expecting 
blows they now have the confidence born of self-respect 
because they are clean and clothed like other children. 

Muncie drunk had all the elements for producing undesir- 
able citizens. Muncie dry is educating and training her quota 
of efficiency and respectability. 

Some Pertinent Questions 

Of what value to the rising generation is the public school 
system ? 

To what extent does an education increase one's ability 
to succeed? 

Why should the physical condition of the pupils be as 
nearly perfect as possible? 

If parents use alcoholic beverages, what will be the prob- 
able physical effects upon their offspring? 

How does alcohol influence tuberculous conditions ? 

What effect does a parent's use of strong drink have upon 
the rate of development in the children? 

What proportion of weakly children have been found in 
families of drinking parents? 

How does destitution among the pupils influence the effi- 
ciency of a school ? 

How should the home cooperate with the school? 



62 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

Is this cooperation possible if the parents are drunkards? 

Why should a saloon be far removed from a schoolhouse? 

The saloon keepers, as a class, are interested in boys and 
girls. For what purpose? 

What effect has license or no license upon school attendance? 

What moral defects are likely to handicap the drunkard's 
child in school work? 

Class Discussion 

Begin by having the members show the value of an educa- 
tion and consequently of the public school system. 

Show the physical, mental, and moral qualities which are 
necessary if children are to undergo the strain of a thorough 
education. 

Have an array of facts presented showing that in various 
ways the use of strong drink by parents unfits children for 
their school tasks. 

What Our Class Can Do 

See to it that proper instruction regarding the dangers of 
alcohol is given in the public schools of the community. 
Have the class purchase copies of "Handbook of Modern 
Facts About Alcohol," by C. F. Stoddard, published by The 
Scientific Temperance Federation (50 cents), and present 
them to all public school teachers. 

Suppress the circulation, either through the public library 
or in other ways, of literature such as "A Textbook of True 
Temperance," by M. Monahan, which misrepresents the 
effects of moderate drinking. 

Influence parents to take a greater interest in the tasks 
of school children. 

Find out what per cent of children over fourteen years of 
age drop out of school. Investigate the reasons. Encourage 
them to continue. 

Free the school children from all direct or indirect burdens 
caused by the sale of liquor in the community. 



LESSON VII 
ALCOHOL THE ENEMY OF LABOR 

The Scripture Reference 

But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not 
defile himself with the king's dainties, nor with the 
wine which he drank : therefore he requested of the 
prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. 
Now God made Daniel to find kindness and compas- 
sion in the sight of the prince of the eunuchs. And 
the prince of the eunuchs said unto Daniel, I fear 
my lord the king, who hath appointed your food and 
your drink : for why should he see your faces worse 
looking than the youths that are of your own age? 
so would ye endanger my head with the king. Then 
said Daniel to the steward whom the prince of the 
eunuchs had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, 
Mishael, and Azariah : Prove thy servants, I beseech 
thee, ten days ; and let them give us pulse to eat, and 
water to drink. Then let our countenances be looked 
upon before thee, and the countenance of the youths 
that eat of the king's dainties ; and as thou seest, 
deal with thy servants. 

So he hearkened unto them in this matter, and 
proved them ten days. And at the end of ten days 
their countenances appeared fairer, and they were 
fatter in flesh, than all the youths that did eat of 
the king's dainties. So the steward took away their 
dainties, and the wine that they should drink, and 
gave them pulse. 

Now as for these four youths God gave them 
knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom : and 
Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. 
And at the end of the days which the king had 
appointed for bringing them in, the prince of the 
eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. 
And the king communed with them ; and among them 
all was found none like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, 
and Azariah : therefore stood they before the king. 

63 



64 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

And in every matter of wisdom and understanding, 
concerning which the king inquired of them, he found 
them ten times better than all the magicians and 
enchanters that were in all his realm. — Daniel i. 8-20. 

The Lesson 
•Society rests upon labor 

There rests upon every normal mature member of society 
the obligation to do some kind of work. If a man does 
not do what God intended him to, either some one else must 
add it to his own burden or else it remains undone and 
mankind is thereby made poorer. It is possible to measure 
the advancement of civilization in terms of labor. For on 
the higher plane of civilization better roads and bridges are 
built, better bread is baked, and better food prepared. The 
sick receive better care. Farms are more productive. Travel 
is safer. Physicians are more skillful. If everyone were to 
stop working, hunger, cold, and death would result. If the 
efficiency of those who toil is diminished, society is thereby 
injured, for society rests upon labor. 

The use of intoxicating liquors decreases a laborer's 
power to produce 

During the months of May and June in a year when there 
were no license and no saloons in North Easton, Mass., three 
hundred and seventy-five men employed by the Messrs. Ames 
in the manufacture of shovels, etc., produced more than did 
four hundred men working under the same labor conditions and 
for the same length of time the year after. During the second 
year the town went license and the four hundred men were 
victims of saloon influence. The manufacturers, closely ob- 
serving the efficiency of their employees, said : "We attribute 
the large falling off entirely to the repeal of the prohibitory 
law and the great increase in the use of intoxicating liquors 
among our men in consequence." Another manufacturer says : 
"The manufacturing and sale of intoxicating liquors is doing 



ALCOHOL THE ENEMY OF LABOR 65 

more to undermine the health and decrease the efficiency of 
the employed as a class than any other cause." When work 
is slack, drinking men are the first to be laid off. They are 
also the last to be taken back. Because their power to pro- 
duce is less, theirs is the smaller chance for advancement. 

Abstainers have greater physical endurance than those 
w ho drink 

On one occasion, eighty-one men entered a walking match, 
the distance being sixty-two miles. The first four to cover 
the distance were abstainers and only two of the first ten 
had drunk anything intoxicating for a long time. More than 
half of the drinkers had to quit, while only two of the 
abstainers fell out. 

The effects of beer upon endurance 

"Tests made in the Swedish army showed that soldiers, 
when abstinent, averaged 359.5 shots before becoming ex- 
hausted, but only 277.5 shots when they had taken, a short 
time before the contest, as much alcohol as is contained in 
one and one quarter pints of beer." 

Professor Durig, an expert mountain climber, found that if 
he drank two to two and one half glasses of beer in a day 
he had to expend fifteen per cent more energy than on the 
days when he did not drink. But in spite of this increase in 
energy, it took him 21.7 per cent longer to reach the top 
of a mountain. 

The opinion of labor leaders 

"The use of liquor and its influences have done more to 
darken labor's homes, dwarf its energies, and chain it hand 
and foot to the wheels of corporate aggression than all other 
influences combined" (R. F. Travelick, President National 
Eight Hour League). 

"The damning curse to labor is that which gurgles from 



66 . THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

the neck of the bottle" (T. V. Powderly, Ex-General Master 
Workman, Knights of Labor). 

"If a brewery is closed, in its place springs up a factory; 
if a saloon is closed, in its place comes a store" (John Mar- 
shall, Vice-President American Federation of Labor). 

"So far as my observation goes, drunkenness was at the 
bottom of all misery in workingmen's homes. Every dollar 
received in revenue from the liquor traffic costs the govern- 
ment twenty-one dollars" (C. D. Wright, Ex-United States 
Commissioner of Labor). 

Keeping within the margin 

A careful study of labor conditions in Massachusetts showed 
the average annual cost of maintaining one laborer's family 
to be $488.96. The average yearly earnings of a laborer's 
family was seen to be $534.99 — only $46.03 more than the cost 
of that family's support. A margin of less than fifty dollars 
a year between the family and poverty or want! If, because 
of sickness or accident, that small margin should be wiped 
out, then the family is no longer adding to the nation's 
wealth — it is an economic burden. And yet "in Chicago a 
group of laboring men spent fourteen hundred dollars in 
one day for beer, while they displayed in a street procession 
these mottoes: 'Our Children Are Crying for Bread,' 'Bread 
or Blood.'" 

The confession of a Michigan farmer 

The ordinary workingman cannot afford to drink. Value 
for his money spent for beer or whiskey is not received. 
What he gives is outrageously out of proportion to what he 
gets, as the following confession will show. 

"I am a farmer and I raise rye. One day I took a 
bushel of rye down to the distiller and sold it to him 
for fifty cents. The distiller got out of the bushel of 
rye three and one half gallons of proof whiskey, which 
he sold to the saloon keeper. I then started with the 
saloon keeper to drink up my bushel of rye at ten 
cents a drink, eight drinks to the pint, or $6.40 a 



ALCOHOL THE ENEMY OF LABOR 67 

gallon. The three and one half gallons of proof 
whiskey, which my fifty-cent rye had made, cost me 
$22.40. I had to sell enough rye to the distiller to 
get money to pay the saloon keeper. After I had 
hauled forty-four and four fifths bushels of rye to 
the distiller to pay for what I had gotten out of one 
bushel, and after I had figured up just how much 
hard work it had taken to produce them, I said to 
myself— 'What a fool!'" 

Seven times an Ohio flood 

It has been estimated by A. P. Sandles, Secretary of the 
Ohio State Board of Agriculture, that the loss to the 
farmers of that State as a result of the recent floods was 
approximately $10,000,000. And yet, in that one State, there 
is spent annually over the bars of the saloons $76,500,000. 
That is more than seven times as much as the farmers lost 
in the floods! When land is injured and houses wrecked, 
the whole nation is profoundly stirred. When the injury is 
sevenfold greater and is a direct attack upon the physical 
and mental efficiency of the citizens, it is tolerated. Are life 
and labor of less value than land? 

Our annual loss of productive power 

Dr. Homer D. Hitchcock, long president of the Michigan 
State Board of Health, in a report of the American Public 
Health Association, estimated the annual loss of productive 
life in this country by reason of the premature deaths caused 
by alcohol to be one million one hundred and twenty-seven 
thousand years. Reckoning the productive power of an able- 
bodied person at five hundred dollars per year, we have an 
annual waste or loss of $563,500,000. But to this enormous 
sum must be added the loss of productive power due to 
insanity and idiocy caused by drink. Dr. Hitchcock estimates 
that each year, from these two causes, four hundred and 
sixteen thousand one hundred and sixty-seven years of pro- 
ductive labor are lost. That means $209,083,500, or a total 
amount of labor valued at $772,583,500. 



68 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

The relation of drink to sickness 

The man who labors cannot afford to part with his health. 
Loss of money from the pay envelope is apt to register the 
days of sickness. The 1910 Report of the Leipsic Sick 
Benefit Societies shows that at the ages twenty-five to thirty- 
four years the average insured man was sick 7.53 days during 
the year. The "drinkers" were sick 19.29 days. "At every 
age period drinkers' sickness lasted about two and one half 
times as long as that of the average insured man." The 
record also showed that "between twenty-five and forty-four 
years of age 'drinkers' were sick on the average 2.7 times 
as often as insured men in general." In a military report 
containing returns of a regiment of British soldiers, the non- 
abstainers were shown to have a sick rate of two and one half 
per cent, while among the abstainers the rate was only one 
half of one per cent. 

Drink increases liability to accident 

At a time when the use of labor-saving machinery is 
rapidly increasing it is of the greatest importance that the 
muscles — both large and small — be under perfect control, and 
that the sense of touch be unimpaired. A dull sense of 
touch or lack of muscular control multiplies the dangers from 
tools and machines. A letter sent out by the Ohio Manu- 
facturers' Association calls attention to the fact that the 
user of alcohol does "not get the same quick response to 
nervous impressions as the healthy man and consequently is 
a frequent loser of that one fifth of a second which has 
saved or lost so many lives." Dangerous occupations are 
made more dangerous by drink. In a famous Iron and Steel 
Works it was found that abstainers had one third less acci- 
dents. The Fidelity and Casualty Company says concerning 
the prevention of industrial accidents : "A man whose nerves 
have been made unsteady by a recent debauch, or by the 
habitual use of alcohol, should not be permitted to operate 
dangerous machinery or to carry on dangerous work. He 



ALCOHOL THE ENEMY OF LABOR 69 

endangers not only his own life, but the lives of others." 
Drink increases liability to accident because it leads one to be 
reckless and foolhardy, it dulls the senses by which danger 
is perceived, it impairs one's judgment of distances, and 
decreases motor control. 

The fatal third hour 

The effect of even small quantities of alcohol is to make 
it impossible to concentrate one's mind upon the task in hand 
as closely as when one is free from alcohol. Grebaut, a well- 
known French scientist, has shown that after alcohol has 
been taken into the stomach the percentage of it in the blood 
that supplies the brain increases gradually from two and 
one half to three hours, when the maximum amount is 
reached. Detailed and independent studies of industrial acci- 
dents in two States have been made by the Massachusetts 
Industrial Accident Board and the Bureau of Labor of 
Minnesota. Both reports state that the greatest number of 
such accidents occur at ten o'clock in the morning and three 
o'clock in the afternoon. If fatigue were the cause, the 
fatal hours would be just before noon, from eleven-thirty 
to twelve o'clock and just before quitting time at night. "But 
between eleven-thirty and twelve o'clock in the morning there 
are only about one third as many accidents as occur at ten 
o'clock, and at five in the afternoon about one fourth as many 
as at three o'clock." Alcohol taken on the way to work — 
just before seven and one o'clock — shows its greatest injury 
about three hours later. 

The effect upon mental efficiency 

As time goes on the demands for accuracy and rapidity 
are made in increasing measure upon mental laborers. Hence 
the added significance of the 'following facts brought out in 
careful experiments. The amount of alcohol consumed by 
one who drinks from two thirds of a bottle to a bottle of 
wine a day for twelve successive days resulted in a loss in 



70 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

mental efficiency of from twenty-five to forty per cent. The 
loss of power to add was forty per cent, while the power to 
memorize on the twelfth day was only seventy per cent of 
what it should have been, taking into account the normal 
results of practice. Those who took from two to four glasses 
of beer a day for twelve days were able to do only sixty-five 
per cent of the work in adding figures that normal practice 
increase would have made possible. Only the ignorant identify 
a feeling of mental power with mental power itself. Thomas 
Edison is reported to have said: "Using drink in business 
is like putting sand in the bearings of an engine. ,, 

The drunkard as a consumer 

The factory hand is dependent upon a job. The factory 
has jobs to offer when there is a demand for its products. 
The consumer — the one who buys clothes, food, and a house 
to live in — creates this demand and keeps the whole industrial 
world busy. Leif Jones, an eminent member of the British 
Parliament, said : 

"I met the finished product of the saloon. He was 
lying in the gutter. He had on no hat; the hat trade 
was suffering. His coat was full of holes; the 
clothing trade was suffering. He had holes in his 
shoes; the shoe trade was suffering. He had on the 
remnant of a shirt; the woolen trade was suffering. 
He had on no socks; the hosiery trade was suffering. 
He was dirty; the soap trade was suffering. I can 
hardly mention a useful industry that was not suffer- 
ing because of that man's insobriety." 

Strong drink not only takes away a man's ability to work 
but also robs the man who has ability of his job. 

Man robbed of his ability to work 

Under modern conditions the majority of men are de- 
prived of adequate food, shelter, clothes, and enjoyment if 
they are not able to work. When man's ability to work is 
improved the advancement of civilization is aided. Without 



ALCOHOL THE ENEMY OF LABOR 71 

men and women who enjoy labor and are equipped physically, 
mentally, and morally to perform useful tasks, society in it- 
present form would come to ruin. But drink decreases man's 
productive power, lessens his power of endurance, increases 
his liability to accident, sickness, and premature death. It 
also greatly reduces that mental clearness which is becoming 
more and more essential to the wage earner in an age when 
labor-saving machinery is being widely used. Moreover, the 
whole industrial order is seriously injured when the prevalent 
use of alcohol makes it impossible for a large portion of the 
population to become normal consumers of natural and useful 
products. Alcohol not only unfits man for labor but also 
decreases the demand for labor. 

Some Pertinent Questions 

What would be the result if half of the workers in the 
world should suddenly become chronic loafers? 

Why should a man try to maintain his highest productive 
power? 

Name four of the most important factors that determine 
one's ability to work. 

What is the effect of alcohol upon endurance? Skill? 
Accuracy? Mental efficiency? Health? 

What is the attitude of some of the prominent labor 
leaders toward drink? 

Why should the poor man especially keep away from drink? 

What are the profits of the distiller of whiskey as compared 
with other manufacturers? 

If the loss caused by the use of alcoholic beverages were 
concentrated into one calamity, what would be the result? 

What would happen to the price of labor if liquor drinking 
should cease and there should be a corresponding rise in 
productive power? 

Would the increased demand for manufactured articles 
and general labor use up this new supply of productive 
power ? 



72 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

What lessons may be drawn from Daniel's insisting upon a 
simple diet? 

Are the conditions of labor so healthful now that men can 
justify habits that tend to increase sickness? 

How does the increased use of machinery affect the problem 
of the use of liquor? 

How does the use of alcohol in small quantities affect one's 
mental efficiency? 

How is the shoe trade affected by the liquor business? 

What should be the attitude of the wage earner toward the 
saloon ? 

Class Discussion 

The class discussion may profitably center in the following 
important truths: 

Labor holds a fundamental and dignified position. 

Strong drink makes a man physically unfit to work. 

It also takes away those mental qualities which are in- 
creasingly in demand. 

Labor is gradually coming to see that alcohol is its worst 
enemy. Manufacturers and labor leaders are trying to save 
the wage earner from the use of alcohol. 

What Our Class Can Do 

Help local labor organizations to conduct a campaign of 
education among their members. 

Hold shop and street meetings in the interest of a saloon- 
less community. 

See that laws are enacted and enforced which will keep 
saloons closed until eight o'clock in the morning and at the 
noon hour. 



LESSON VIII 

THE POLITICAL ACTIVITY OF THE 
LIQUOR INTERESTS 

The Scripture Reference 

Why standest thou afar off, O Jehovah? 

Why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble? 

In the pride of the wicked the poor is hotly pursued ; 

Let them be taken in the devices that they have con- 
ceived. 

For the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, 

And the covetous renounceth, yea, contemneth 
Jehovah. 

The wicked, in the pride of his countenance, saith, 
He will not require it 

All his thoughts are, There is no God. 

His ways are firm at all times ; 

Thy judgments are far above out of his sight: 

As for all his adversaries, he puffeth at them. 

He saith in his heart, I shall not be moved ; 

To all generations I shall not be in adversity. 

His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and oppres- 
sion : 

Under his tongue is mischief and iniquity. 

He sitteth in the lurking-places of the villages ; 

In the secret places doth he murder the innocent; 

His eyes are privily set against the helpless. 

He lurketh in secret as a lion in his covert; 

He lieth in wait to catch the poor: 

He doth catch the poor, when he draweth him in his 
net. 

He croucheth, he boweth down, 

And the helpless fall by his strong ones. 

He saith in his heart : God hath forgotten, 

He hideth his face, he will never see it. 

Arise, O Jehovah; O God, lift up thy hand: 

Forget not the poor. — Psalm 10. 1-12. 

73 



74 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

The Lesson 
The opinions of men of political experience 

The following opinions expressed by a governor, a senator, 
a judge, a president of the United States, and a world 
statesman, all of whom have witnessed the political activity 
of the liquor interests, are worthy of the most careful 
thought. The late Senator Edward Carmack, of Tennessee, 
said : 

"I am weary of saloon domination. I am weary 
of a condition of things where the man whose busi- 
ness it is to make the laws must hold his office by 
consent of the man whose business it is to break 
the laws." 

Judge Claudius B. Grant, formerly Chief Justice of the 
Supreme Court of the State of Michigan, expresses the 
opinion that, 

"The saloon has ever been and ever will be a 
corrupt element in politics." 

Ex-Governor William M. Dawson of West Virginia says : 

"Do men deplore the rule of corrupt political 
bosses? It is the saloon that rallies the mass of venal 
and unpatriotic voters who constitute the phalanx of 
the bosses' power. Has crime become rampant on the 
streets? The saloon is the refuge of criminals. Does 
vice seek protection? The saloon effects the arrange- 
ment with the policemen who are familiar with its 
dark secrets and comrades of its debased fraternity. 
Do gamblers wish to ply their demoralized trade 
among the young? The saloon affords them not 
only the shield, but brings them the susceptible patron- 
age of inexperienced youths." 

Thomas Jefferson said : 

"The habit of using ardent spirits by men in office 
has occasioned more injury to the public and more 
trouble to me than all other sources. And were I 
to commence my administration again the first ques- 
tion I would ask respecting a candidate for office 
would be: Does he use ardent spirits?" 



LIQUOR POLITICAL ACTIVITIES 75 

William E. Gladstone's judgment was: 

"This traffic has wrought more harm than the three 
historic scourges — war, famine, and pestilence — com- 
bined." 

Nezvspaper corruption 

One of the most fundamental and far-reaching political 
activities of the liquor interests has been, and is, the creation 
of public opinion through influences brought to bear upon 
the newspapers. In 1889 the State of Pennsylvania gave a 
substantial majority against a Prohibition amendment. The 
manager of the liquor funds and forces is reported to have 
made the following statement after the campaign was over, 
showing how the newspapers were handled : 

"We bought them by paying down so much cash. 
I visited the editors in person, or had some good man 
do so, and arranged to pay each paper for its support 
a certain amount of money. Throughout the State 
we paid weekly papers from fifty to five hundred 
dollars to publish such matter as we might furnish, 
either news or editorial, but the city daily papers we 
had to pay from one thousand to four thousand 
dollars. ... It was understood with most of all the 
papers that we would furnish the matter, and so we 
employed a man to write for us and prepare articles 
for publication, which would be furnished to the 
papers to be printed as news or editorial matter, as 
we might direct. The most effective matter we 
could get up in the influencing of votes was that 
Prohibition did not prohibit, and the revenue, taxa- 
tion, and how Prohibition would hurt the farmers. 
We would have these articles printed in different 
papers and then buy thousands of copies of the paper 
and send them to the farmers. If you work the 
farmers on the tax question you can catch them every 
time." 

Alcohol in the melting pot 

The influence of the saloon upon the millions of foreigners 
who are coming to be such a potent factor in the political 
life of our nation has become alarming. The liquor interests 



76 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

are taking advantage of the susceptibility of the foreigner to 
early social and political impressions. In the "Brewers' 
Journal" of June I, 1910, appeared this statement: 

"The Anglo-Saxon element, from which we in- 
herited the abominable remnants of puritanism, is 
rapidly disappearing in this country." 

In the following statement Mr. Harry G. McCain gives a 
picture of alcohol in the melting pot. 

"The political ideals of these people are blighted 
and blasted by the political atmosphere of the saloon. 
What are the political ideals of the liquor traffic ? 
It is the arch vote-purchasing and politics-corrupting 
agency of this nation. The liquor traffic teaches the 
immigrant that it is not the integrity of the candidate, 
nor the justice of a measure, that should determine 
a man's vote, but the highest bidder ! The liquor 
traffic knows no law of service or self-sacrifice; it 
follows no principle except self-aggrandizement, and 
has no ideal except to 'rule and ruin.' These political 
tenets it teaches to these millions who will be citizens 
to-morrow. What does this mean for the future 
of our nation? 

"Does the immigrant constitute a menace to Amer- 
ican ideals and institutions? If so, it is because of the 
influence of the liquor traffic in his life. What are we 
going to do about it ? Can we evangelize the slums 
while the liquor system, backed by an enormous trust, 
is intrenched there, making criminals a hundredfold 
faster than we can make citizens? If we can't com- 
pete with the liquor traffic, let's kill the competitor!" 

Brewery ownership of saloons 

If the saloons are known to be the rallying places of 
corrupt politicians and "venal, unpatriotic voters," the danger 
of having their political power centralized and in control of 
any small group of financially interested men is apparent. 
In this connection it is significant to note the number of 
saloons owned by brewers. In 1913 the Legislature of Minne- 
sota appointed a special committee to investigate the relation 
between the brewers and the saloons of that license State. 



LIQUOR POLITICAL ACTIVITIES 77 

The committee made a searching investigation, and the 
substance of its report was published in the Minneapolis 
News of March 18 of that year as follows: 

"Breweries control seven eighths of the saloons of 
the Twin Cities, promote houses of ill-fame and blind 
pigs, and corrupt politics. 

"Out of eight hundred and fourteen saloons in 
Minneapolis and Saint Paul, seven hundred and twelve 
are either owned or controlled by brewing companies. 

"Four hundred and eighteen buildings occupied by 
saloons are owned by brewing companies, and in many 
other cases the brewers own the fixtures or hold 
mortgages on buildings or sites. 

"In Minneapolis three brewing companies own two 
hundred and seventy saloon buildings. 

"There are sixteen brewing companies in business 
in the two cities. 

"Agents for brewing companies appear with appli- 
cants for liquor licenses and practically control the 
granting of such licenses. 

"From sixty to seventy-five per cent of license fees 
in Saint Paul are paid by breweries, and over forty 
per cent in Minneapolis. 

"As many as twenty-five licenses are held by one 
brewing company. 

"Many license fees are paid by breweries who are 
paid back by saloon keepers in installments of twenty 
dollars weekly. 

"Brewing companies buy property for blind pig 
purposes and for houses of ill-fame, placing agents 
in charge of same. 

"Blind pigs are encouraged by breweries, who de- 
posit as high as one thousand dollars to pay possible 
fines.'' 

A lobby in Washington 

With political influence and vast capital thus centralized, 
influence upon legislation is the next logical step. Mr. 
William E. Johnson, when chief special officer of the United 
States Indian Service, said that the United States Brewers' 
Association, ever since its organization in i860, has main- 
tained a lobby in Washington and has exercised a powerful 



78 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

influence over legislation proposals affecting its interests. For 
thirty years after its organization this association is said to 
have had things practically its own way in the capital of the 
nation. It was said of Senator Blair, for instance, that he 
led the contest for national Prohibition "with such vigor 
and persistency that his political downfall resulted." 

Money and politics 

It is a fact universally recognized that under the Republican 
form of government money is a large factor in political 
affairs. The ordinary voter is not aware of the vast amounts 
of money that are available for use by those who are intent 
upon furthering the interests of the liquor business. It is 
estimated that Chicago spends at least half as much for what 
it drinks as for what it eats, not counting the cost of the 
cooking and serving of food. The receipts in the retail 
liquor trade in this city for one year were over $100,000,000. 
With this vast sum in the hands of men whose motives have 
become morally degenerate, the political menace becomes 
gigantic. In a study of the great business of dissipation in 
Chicago, Mr. George Kibbe Turner, a noted magazine writer, 
found that the profits and the political necessities of the 
business of dissipation are incomparably greater than those 
of the public service corporation. Then, because their "busi- 
ness" demands the breaking of the law, these dealers must 
go into politics, they must control politics — and they do. It 
has been no secret that the control of the first and eighteenth 
wards, in which the "business of dissipation" was concen- 
trated, was in the hands of saloon keepers of evil reputa- 
tion. The writer expressed the opinion that this control by 
the liquor interests extended over every part of the municipal 
government from the city hall to the newly appointed police- 
men. Appointments were influenced, "payment for protec- 
tion" was collected from places of vice, vote buying was 
deliberately carried on. Mr. Turner pleaded for a simpli- 
fication of municipal government so that the "will of the 



LIQUOR POLITICAL ACTIVITIES 79 

people" might be obtained. "The fact is," he writes, "that 
under present conditions the financial interests of dissipation 
have more direct representation in the administration of the 
city government than the will of the people." 

"It is true that criminal saloons have an understanding 
with the police that they may violate the law until some one 
protests, and that then they will be notified by the police and 
kept in touch with the situation until it is advisable for them 
to resume the practices which are objected to." 

The conclusion arrived at by this careful investigation was 
that saloon money must be taken out of politics. "It is safe 
to guarantee that when the money . . . has been taken out of 
politics, the only 'regulation' of saloons that will appear 
'reasonable' is total annihilation." 

Moral and political forces 

In order for society to be maintained in safe and enduring 
form, there must be harmony between its organized moral 
forces, such as the home, the school, the church, and the 
organized political forces, such as the political parties. If 
the organized political forces become dominated by interests 
that create and maintain influences which lead to the de- 
moralization of man, the outlook for society is dark. When 
political parties in power make possible laws which imperil 
the home, which permit the social corruption of youth, which 
seriously interfere with the sanctity of the Sabbath, their 
moral character must be judged by their fruits. "Is there a 
law," writes Dr. A. A. Hopkins, "which comes between the 
home and the school, and halts the feet that seek the halls 
of learning, and turns them surely to the paths of shame, 
which makes more difficult the teacher's task, and renders 
less beneficent the school's mission, and spreads ignorance, 
vice, and crime where education should be beneficently dif- 
fused? Then this law is evidence, actual, unimpeachable, 
and appalling, that there are organized political forces not in 
harmony with moral forces." 



80 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

The saloon keeper and the voter 

If a voter, after having become informed as to the political, 
moral, and economic devastation wrought by the saloon, 
continues to vote for license, he thereby becomes morally 
responsible, with the man more directly connected with the 
liquor business, for these evil results. Here is the case 
stated in simple terms by Mr. George R. Stewart in his 
"The Saloon Under the Searchlight" : 

"My neighbor, A, on the left, has some money in 
his pocket which I desire to secure to assist me in 
paying the taxes on my property. To do this it will 
be necessary to murder this man. I do not desire to 
murder him myself, because I am a so-called decent 
citizen. I do not care to have my family and my repu- 
tation connected with a murder case in the courts. 
My neighbor, B, on the right, is a vicious character. 
He is blinded by the dollar. His ideas of brotherly 
love, of man's duty to his fellow man, and of man's 
duty to his community, are low and vicious. He has 
no family pride and no personal pride. He is willing 
to sell out everything for the dollar. I combine with 
my neighbor, B, furnish him my pistol with which 
to kill neighbor, A, and he and I divide the money 
filched from the dead man's pocket. He supports his 
family with his part ; I pay my taxes with mine. Now 
let neighbor A represent the poor unfortunate man 
whose appetite leads to drink. Let B represent the 
saloon keeper, with whom I combine, to whom I 
furnish my ballot. It is my ballot with which he 
procures the saloon, furnishes the liquor to my neigh- 
bor, A, and takes his money for it. His liquor destroys 
the poor, unfortunate man. I get a part of the money 
to pay my taxes. I hold that the poor, vicious B is 
as vile in the second act as he is in the first, and that 
I, who would not do the act myself, but furnished to 
him the means with which he might do it, am a more 
vicious character in each case than he." 

Organized moral forces must make themselves felt 
politically 

The vast amount of legislation that makes possible the 



LIQUOR POLITICAL ACTIVITIES 81 

development of the liquor business and gives it political 
protection registers the political successes of that business. 
It does not necessarily mean that the organized immoral 
forces are inherently stronger than those that are moral. But 
it does mean that they are so related to the political life of 
the nation or State that they have greater political influence. 
The imperative demand is that the citizens who are vitally 
interested in the welfare of the home, the school, and the 
church, become organized so as to make their maximum 
strength felt in the places where laws are made and enforced. 
There must come harmony and cooperation among the various 
churches and patriotic and educational societies. A common 
and trusted leadership is greatly needed. The full force of 
the moral elements in the nation is greater than those that 
are immoral. They can control the politics of the nation. 
But in order to actually accomplish that end they must 
develop greater political interest and activity. The political 
party in power must be dominated by the highest moral 
motives and remain inviolable and incorruptible in carrying 
through its exalted purpose. 



The opinion of John Adams s 

In the following words one of our greatest statesmen 
predicted the political danger of the liquor business : 

"Like so many boxes of Pandora, dram-shops are 
hourly scattering plagues of every kind — natural, 
moral, and political. The worst effect of all, and 
which ought to make every man, who has the least 
sense of his privilege, tremble, these houses are 
become in many places the nurseries of our legis- 
lators. ... I think it would be well worth the atten- 
tion of our Legislature to confine the number and 
retrieve the character of licensed houses, lest that 
impiety and profaneness, that abandoned intemperance 
and prodigality, that impudence and brawling temper, 
which these abominable nurseries daily propagate, 
should arrive at last to a degree of strength that even 
the Legislature will not be able to control." 



82 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

The "plagues of every kind," newspaper corruption, injury 
to voters coming from the immigrant classes, brewery owner- 
ship of saloons, the rallying of unpatriotic voters, a powerful 
lobby, the attack upon the morals of our lawmakers, have 
all been scattered over our political life. And we, as a 
nation, are reaping an awful harvest of ills. 

Some Pertinent Questions 

How did William E. Gladstone look upon the liquor traffic? 

What was Thomas Jefferson's opinion? 

In what ways have the liquor interests used the news- 
papers to influence public opinion? 

What evidences are there that liquor advertisements have 
served as bribes? 

What is the influence of the saloon upon the immigrant? 

To what extent were the saloons in Minneapolis and Saint 
Paul under the direct control of the brewers? 

How do such saloons constitute a political menace? 

What has been the history of the liquor lobby at Washing- 
ton? 

What political danger can you see in the vast sums of 
money in control of the liquor interests? 

To what extent is the voter who votes for license respon- 
sible for the social injury caused by the saloon? 

Why should the moral and religious forces of a community 
feel the responsibility of making themselves felt politically? 

Is it just to judge the moral character of the party in 
power by the moral character of the legislation enacted by it? 

How can the Christian sentiment of America manifest its 
full strength at the polls? 

Class Discussion 

Guard against any tendency to let the discussion drift away 
from the main point of the lesson. The spirit of political 
partisanship should not enter into the discussion. 



LIQUOR POLITICAL ACTIVITIES 83 

Show by what methods the liquor interests have tried to 
influence voters and legislators. Have it brought vividly 
before the class that these interests are equipped with the 
kind of resources that count in such undertakings. 

In the final moments of the hour let every member feel 
the responsibility for the organization of the moral forces 
of which he is a part, to the end that each may become 
politically effective. 

What Our Class Can Do 

Before local and State elections find out the attitude of 
the candidates toward the liquor business. See to it that 
the members of the class, and all voters of similar moral 
sympathies, are correctly informed. 

Have candidates for office come before the class or before 
a meeting arranged for by it and declare their attitude on 
this question. 

Bring moral pressure to bear upon the newspapers to help 
them resist the pressure of the liquor interests. Patronize 
those that stand against such interests. 



LESSON IX 
HOW DRINK INJURES THE HOME 

The Scripture Reference 

Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath conten- 
tions? 

Who hath complaining? who hath wounds without 
cause? 

Who hath redness of eyes? 

They that tarry long at the wine; 

They that go to seek out mixed wine. 

Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, 

When it sparkleth in the cup, 

When it goeth down smoothly: 

At the last it biteth like a serpent, 

And stingeth like an adder. 

Thine eyes shall behold strange things, 

And thy heart shall utter perverse things. 

— Proverbs 23. 29-33. 

On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was 
merry with wine, he commanded Mehuman, Biztha, 
Harbona, Bigtha, and Abagtha, Zethar, and Carcas, 
the seven chamberlains that ministered in the presence 
of Ahasuerus the king, to bring Vashti the queen 
before the king with the crown royal, to show the 
peoples and the princes her beauty; for she was fair 
to look on. But the queen Vashti refused to come at 
the king's commandment by the chamberlains : there- 
fore was the king very wroth, and his anger burned 
in him. 

Then the king said to the wise men, who knew the 
times (for so was the king's manner toward all that 
knew law and judgment; and the nex\ unto him were 
Carshena, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshish, Meres, Mar- 
sena, and Memucan, the seven princes of Persia and 
Media, who saw the king's face, and sat first in the 
kingdom), What shall we do unto the queen Vashti 
according to law, because she hath not done the bid- 
ding of the king Ahasuerus by the chamberlains? 
84 



HOW DRINK INJURES THE HOME 85 

And Memucan answered before the king and the 
princes, Vashti the queen hath not done wrong to the 
king only, but also to all the princes, and to all the 
peoples that are in all the provinces of the king 
Ahasuerus. For this deed of the queen will come 
abroad unto all women, to make their husbands con- 
temptible in their eyes, when it shall be reported. 
The king Ahasuerus commanded Vashti the queen to 
be brought in before him, but she came not. And 
this day will the princesses of Persia and Media who 
have heard of the deed of the queen say the like 
unto all the king's princes. So will there arise much 
contempt and wrath. If it please the king, let there 
go forth a royal commandment from him, and let it 
be written among the laws of the Persians and the 
Medes, that it be not altered, that Vashti come no 
more before king Ahasuerus; and let the king give 
her royal estate unto another that is better than she. 
And when the king's decree which he shall make 
shall be published throughout all his kingdom (for 
it is great), all the wives will give to their husbands 
honor, both to great and small. And the saying 
pleased the king and the princes ; and the king did 
according to the word of Memucan : for he sent 
letters into all the king's provinces, into every prov- 
ince according to the writing thereof, and to every 
people after their language, that every man should 
bear rule in his own house, and should speak accord- 
ing to the language of his people. — Esther 1. 10-22. 

And Abigail came to Nabal ; and, behold, he held 
a feast in his house, like the feast of a king; and 
Nabal's heart was merry within him, for he was very 
drunken : wherefore she told him nothing, less or 
more, until the morning light. And it came to pass 
in the morning, when the wine was gone out of 
Nabal, that his wife told him these things, and his 
heart died within him, and he became as a stone. 
And it came to pass about ten days after, that Jehovah 
smote Nabal, so that he died. — 1 Samuel 25. 36-38. 

The Lesson 
The home is the heart of a nation's life 
The home sustains a vital relation to the State. More 



86 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

than any other institution it influences the moral character 
and permanency of the nation. What the heart is to the 
physical body, the home is to the body politic — its real source 
of life. The surest way to safeguard the State is to protect 
the family from corrupting influences. If family life begins 
to disintegrate and decay, the existence of the nation is 
endangered. "To maintain normal family life, to restore it 
when it has been interfered with, to create conditions more 
and more favorable to it" is the fundamental object of 
efficient efforts to elevate society. Hence to measure the 
influence of any institution upon the home helps to point 
out its real place in the life of the nation. 

Parental responsibility 

The present generation of parents are the trustees of human 
life. The responsibility for the health, education, social and 
industrial efficiency, and moral character of the coming gen- 
eration rests primarily upon them. The destiny of the nation 
rests heavily upon these to whom has been committed the 
care of young life. Any influence that blights that sense of 
parental responsibility or that renders these "trustees" un- 
able or unfit to perform their important duties is a direct 
blow at the welfare of society. 

The rights of the child 

The child's first claim for protection, care, nourishment, 
and an environment that is intellectually, morally, and reli- 
giously stimulating is upon its parents. But "society under- 
writes the obligation" by providing a living wage, by in- 
specting the foods that are put into the market, by protecting 
life and guarding health, by guaranteeing liberty and the 
free pursuit of legitimate pleasures, and by protecting woman- 
hood. When for any reason the natural home is seriously 
impaired the State feels the responsibility of respecting these 
rights of the child and undertakes to care for it. In the 
interest of self-preservation, society must recognize the child's 



HOW DRINK INJURES THE HOME 87 

needs. These needs should be supplied in the home. No 
other institution can take its place. Children who become 
State charges lose from their lives something that is vital. 

The home and the saloon 

Hence there rests upon every intelligent citizen the re- 
sponsibility of seeing to it that society does not tolerate the 
presence of any institution that interferes with parents doing 
their duty. The influences that are most deadly in this regard 
are social impurity, gambling, crime, pauperism, vice in its 
many forms, insanity, industrial inefficiency, sickness and 
disease. But these are all "the legitimate children of the 
liquor traffic; it is in the saloon where they are born and 
bred. Trace back the story of pauperism, crime, vice, in- 
sanity, disease, and pollution to their most prolific source and 
that source will be the legalized liquor traffic, manifested in 
the open saloon." 

Drink reduces the possible income of the home 

If the earnings of the bread-winner of the family are 
spent in drink, from what source shall the home derive its 
comforts or even its necessities? The use of alcoholic 
liquors as a beverage reduces a man's physical and mental 
ability, renders him more liable to sickness and accident, and 
reduces his chances of finding and keeping a steady job. 
All this affects his wages. The income of the man who 
drinks is reduced. If he happens to be the one upon whom 
a family depends for support, his lack of productive power 
is apt to be recorded in the poverty or destitution of his 
wife and children. In reducing the wage-earning capacity of 
the father, the liquor traffic becomes a robber of the pros- 
perity and comfort of the home of which he is the head. 

Drink reduces the available income of the home 

The father who drinks not only reduces the amount of 
his wages but also further depletes the amount of money 



88 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

that is available for the support of his family by spending a 
part of it for that which is neither food nor shelter. The 
annual liquor bill of the United States is approximately 
$1,750,000,000. For $650,000,000 you could buy all of the 
cotton goods produced in the United States for one year; for 
$460,000,000 all of the woolens and worsteds. $435,000,000 
would purchase every barrel of flour milled, and the potato 
crop of the United States could be secured for $205,000,000 
more. The $1,750,000,000 spent for liquor would therefore 
purchase the total output of these four industries. 

Some interesting comparisons 

"All of the wheat produced in our country in 1910 would 
pay our drink bill for less than eighty-two days. 

"All of the coal produced the same year would pay our 
drink bill less than eighty-three days. 

"All of the gold mined in the United States in 1910 would 
not pay twelve days' drink bill. All of the silver mined in 
our country in the same year would not pay five days' drink 
bill. 

"One hundred and twenty days' drink bill would wipe out 
of existence our entire interest-bearing national debt. 

"Fifty days' drink bill would build the Panama Canal." 

Wages paid in the liquor industry 

Nor does the liquor business pay in wages, to those who 
are employed in the places of manufacture and distribution, 
enough to wipe out this charge of being a twofold destroyer 
of home comforts and necessities. At its own estimate it 
pays only fifty-four millions of dollars annually to its various 
employees. The other manufacturers of the nation pay 
forty-eight times as much in wages alone. Mr. Deets 
Pickett, Research Secretary of the Temperance Society of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church, says: 

"Labor receives seven and sixty-three hundredths 
per cent of the wholesale value of liquor produced, 



HOW DRINK INJURES THE HOME 89 

whereas the average for all manufacturing indus- 
tries, according to the abstract of the Census of 1910, 
is sixteen and fifty-seven hundredths per cent. The 
manufacturer of liquors ranks twenty-third in the 
proportion of final wholesale value which goes to 
labor; that is, twenty-two other industries pay a larger 
percentage of their receipts to the man whose brawn 
and sweat is given freely for the day's wages." 

Families that own their own homes 

Families that live in their own homes enjoy a sense of 
security and permanency which does not come to those who 
live in rented apartments. Moreover they take greater interest 
in the artistic appearance — the silent teachers — of the house. 
In 1900 the per cent of families who owned their own homes 
in the five prohibition States at that time was 59.1 per cent, 
while in the license and partially-license States the per- 
centage was 45.8. 

The saloon zvorks against the health of the family 

Xo generation can, if it would, live unto itself. The 
record of our past lives is handed down with a fearful 
accuracy to the lives that come after us. The sins of the 
fathers are visited upon the children, not through any arbi- 
trary decree on the part of an outraged God, but by the 
inevitable workings of a natural law. "Whatsoever a man 
soweth, that shall he also reap" is written large at the very 
heart of the universe, and when one sows a habit which 
brings forth a harvest of weakened nerves, enfeebled brain, 
diseased tissues, and the general degeneration which comes 
from alcohol, he must not complain if that harvest comes to 
perfection in his own life and the lives of his descendants. 

Dr. T. A. MacNicholl, of New York, who has made 
investigations of the relation of alcohol to degeneracy, says : 

"Within thirty years the mortality from chronic 
diseases has doubled. Within a period of fifty-three 
years the country's population increased three hun- 
dred and thirty per cent, while the number of insane 



90 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

and feeble-minded increased nine hundred and fifty 
per cent. . . . During the past five years the United 
States birthrate has fallen off thirty-three and one 
third per cent; this means the loss of a million babies 
a year. Let this degeneracy continue at the same 
rate for one hundred years, and there will not be a 
native born child five years old in the United States." 

Dr. MacNicholl then answers the question : "What is the 
cause of this degeneracy ?" as follows: 

"A hundred different intermediate agencies may 
contribute to the undoing of the race, but back of 
them all stands alcohol as the chief degenerative 
factor. . . ." 

This great burden of drink is not borne by the drinker, 
but by the drinker's children. They come into the world 
handicapped by lowered vitality. The report of a recent 
French investigation showed that of the fifty-three thousand 
children that died in one decade under eleven months of 
age, nearly one fourth succumbed from lack of vitality, and 
this the investigators believed to be largely due to alcoholism 
in the parents. 

Of the children of drinking parents having sufficient vitality 
to live, a large part are handicapped with physical or mental 
weaknesses that hamper them all through life, or make them 
an easy prey to diseases that carry them off prematurely. 
Tuberculosis occurs with marked frequency in the families 
of 4 rm k ers > a n indication of weakened physical resistance. 
Inability to withstand fatigue and the craving for something 
to give a feeling of strength is a reasonable explanation of 
one cause at least of the greater tendency to the formation 
of drinking habits in the children of drinkers. 

The saloon is the foe of home's happiness and integrity 

Whence come brawlings? Whence come contentions? 
Whence come heart breaks, tears, and sighs? Have you 
ever had the inexpressible anguish of studying at first hand 



HOW DRINK INJURES THE HOME 91 

a drunkard's home? Then you know that it is the fittest 
earthly type of inferno. But even where the saloon has not 
wrought its perfected work, where "moderate drinking" only 
is indulged in, alcohol is still the enemy of home's happiness. 
More quarrels have their beginning in the wine glass than 
in any other one source. More crooked thinking and more 
crooked deeds come from partly alcoholized brains than from 
any other. Said a gentleman to a physician not long since : 

"I have all my life been accustomed to taking with 
my dinner one glass of wine. Sometimes, when dining 
out, or when I have special guests, I exceed that 
limit ; I drink two or three, or perhaps more glasses. 
I never do that that I am not at once conscious of 
a distinct lowering of my moral tone. I find myself 
uttering sentiments which I know I do not really 
believe. I find myself saying things which I know, in 
my best moments, I could not uphold. I am conscious 
of a lowering of my entire moral tone." 

The fact that his moral tone was doubtless lowered by 
even the one glass was put so clearly before him by the 
physician that he became a total abstainer. Home's happi- 
ness, home's purity, home's integrity and uprightness are 
constantly endangered by the saloon. 

The broken homes 

From 1887 to 1906 there were 184,568 divorces in the United 
States due to intemperance on the part of husband or wife. 
According to the Census Bureau, one divorce in every five 
has intemperance as one cause. In Chicago and Brooklyn 
investigations have been made to ascertain what were the 
principal causes of divorces and family separations. Judge 
Gemmill, of the Chicago Court of Domestic Relations, put 
into operation a system of recording the cases of family 
troubles brought to his court for settlement from which he 
found that forty-six per cent were caused by drink. No 
other one cause furnished over fourteen per cent. The 
Brooklyn investigation, which was carried out by probation 



92 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

officers, resulted in nearly the same percentage of broken 
homes due to drink — 45.8 per cent. The Superintendent of 
the Bureau of Domestic Relations in the City of New York 
told a Sun reporter that by far the most frequent cause of 
the breaking up of homes in the four thousand cases dealt 
with in that city the same year was drink. "The havoc that 
drink plays in domestic troubles has never been exaggerated," 
said Miss Ida Tarbell in summing up the evidence in The 
American Magazine, January, 1914. In England the condi- 
tion seems to be even worse, according to the testimonies 
of divorce court officials. "If you eliminate the drink ques- 
tion you eliminate ninety per cent of the cases we have," 
says J. R. Roberts, editor of "Justices' Manual" and president 
of the Incorporated Society of Justices' Clerks. "If the 
drink habit could be eradicated from the nation, this court 
might close its doors, at any rate for the greater part of the 
time," is the testimony of Lord Gorell, the president of an 
English divorce court. 

Actual disruption of the family on account of intolerable 
conduct due to drink represents only the extreme stage. 
Many minor degrees impair more or less seriously the irre- 
placeable function of the home in forming the character of 
a people. When an able-bodied man fails to support the 
home and the wife and mother must turn breadwinner, her 
possibilities for advancing civilization through elevating home 
influences are immensely reduced. An investigation of three 
hundred and eighty-six cases of family desertion in twenty- 
five cities of the United States, by Miss Lillian Brandt (1905), 
showed that three hundred and twenty-five of the men and 
forty-three of the women were hard drinkers. Another 
report by the Associated Charities of Boston (1910) gives an 
account of three hundred and fifty-two able-bodied men in 
Boston in one year who failed to support their families. 
The Associated Charities was appealed to by the families 
for aid and found on investigation that two hundred and 
forty-three of these men (sixty-nine per cent) were drunk- 
ards. Accounts may be found in reports of social workers of 



HOW DRINK INJURES THE HOME 93 

children acting as family breadwinners, supporting and taking 
care of drunken fathers or mothers, or both. Heavy as is 
the burden of such children, they are not the only ones that 
are oppressed by it. The community of which they are a 
part is decidedly poorer because of the necessarily dwarfed 
development of such premature burden-bearers. This re- 
action upon the community is, of course, just retribution for 
its failure to protect its citizens from public traffic in a 
brain poison. 

The conclusion is irresistible. It is the duty of all 
who care for the homes of the nations to put themselves in 
battle array against the home's arch foe. By example and 
influence, by voice and vote, by prayer and by work, every 
home and every inmate of a home who cares for the welfare 
of the nation and the establishment of Christ's Kingdom 
upon earth should declare "Saloons must go/' that, thereby, 
better homes may come. With liquor abolished, wages will 
increase and a better financial support of the family will 
thereby come. Take the money that goes for drink and 
spend it for the home and a new era of comfort will result. 
Stop drink and children will be born healthier, reared under 
better conditions, arrive at a higher plane of moral develop- 
ment. Grinding poverty, that leaves no room for proper 
relaxation, will no longer be the force it now is, working as 
it does against the happiness of the home. Abolish the liquor 
traffic and the worst hindrance standing in the way of the 
natural expression of the God-given parental instinct will 
be removed. 

Some Pertinent Questions 

Why is the family the fundamental social institution? 

Which is the more important in the making of citizens, the 
home or the public school? 

Of what service should the home be to the child? 

Which is more prudent for the State, to prevent the dis- 
integration of homes, or to build orphanages and asylums to 
take care of the products of wrecked homes? 



94 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

Wherein does the saloon affect the home directly? 

Wherein does it injure the home indi ectly? 

What portion of a man's wages should go to the support 
of his wife and children? 

How much of it has he a right to spend foolishly? 

If our annual liquor bill were used to buy houses at three 
thousand dollars each, how many families could thus be 
supplied? 

How is it that the saloon costs the State twice as much as 
the license fees amount to? 

Has a mother the moral right to ask the State to protect 
the welfare and happiness of her home? 

What effect does alcohol have on the marriage bond? 

Class Discussion 

Bring out the importance of the home ; its influence upon 
the children and parents. Show that the character of the 
home depends upon the parental sense of responsibility and 
parental resources, financial, intellectual, and moral. 

With a full appreciation of the importance of the home, 
demonstrate that drink reduces, in many ways, the resources 
without which a home is impossible, and injures the parents' 
sense of responsibility and fitness to perform their duties. 

Let the discussion become a direct, personal appeal to the 
manhood or womanhood of the members present, with a 
forceful presentation of the call to protect innocent and 
helpless children from the results of the liquor traffic. 

What Our Class Can Do 

Have three members read and report on Chapters II, V, 
and VIII of Devine's "The Family and Social Work." 

Have a representative of some such organization as the 
Associated Charities address the class on the effects of the 
saloon upon the homes of your community. 

Plan and inaugurate a campaign to save the children of 
your community from the evil results of poverty. 



LESSON X 

THE USE OF ALCOHOL A SOURCE OF 
POVERTY 

The Scripture Reference 

It is not for kings, Lemuel, it is not for kings to 

drink wine ; 
Nor for princes to say, Where is strong drink? 
Lest they drink, and forget the law, 
And pervert the justice due to any that is afflicted. 
Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, 
And wine unto the bitter in soul : 
Let him drink, and forget his poverty, 
And remember his misery no more. 

— Proverbs 31. 4-7. 

Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and 
thy princes eat in the morning ! Happy art thou, O 
land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy 
princes eat in due season, for strength, and not for 
drunkenness ! — Ecclesiastes 10. 17, 18. 

The Lesson 
What is poverty ? 

Every individual should be supplied with sufficient nourish- 
ing food, clothing, shelter, and opportunities for physical 
and social relaxation to be able to be maintained at the 
highest point of mental and physical efficiency. The man 
who is poorly fed cannot accomplish the amount of work of 
which he is naturally capable. The body must have adequate 
protection from excessive cold and heat. Otherwise physical 
efficiency is impaired. It is possible for an individual to be 
deprived of these resources necessary to highest mental and 
physical efficiency and yet not experience the pain and suffer- 

95 



96 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

ing that result from destitution. Efficiency on one hand and 
destitution on the other mark the boundaries of what may 
be termed poverty. 

Poverty and income 

It does not follow, necessarily, that the man of small income 
is the poor man, and the one of large income he who main- 
tains the highest efficiency. A man may have a salary or 
wage that is adequate to supply the necessary food and 
shelter and opportunity to play, but for some reason fail to 
spend it for these things. He may have an income that is 
adequate and yet spend so much of his money for that 
which is not bread, such a large portion of his income for 
that which does not satisfy his real needs, that he is no 
better off physically than the one whose income is inadequate. 
With the majority of people it is a problem not so much of 
earnings as it is of judicious spending and of saving. After 
the other things are paid for, what amount is left for the 
essential things? is with many the vital question. With many 
a man it comes to be a question not of how much is con- 
sumed, but rather of how much real food is consumed. 

The principle illustrated 

A special inquiry on the alcohol factor in social conditions 
was recently conducted by Mr. George Blaikloch, Barrister- 
at-Law, for the Committee of the National Temperance 
League of England. The report, as given in the summer of 
1914 issue of the National Temperance Quarterly, describes 
a large number of cases of poverty of which the following 
is typical : 

"A man earning twenty-seven shillings per week 
lived in the slums. He became converted and signed 
the pledge. In one month he removed to a better 
house in a respectable district. In two years he 
refurnished the house, and with two of his children 
working, at the end of six years he paid in cash fifty 
pounds for a piano." 



ALCOHOL A SOURCE OF POVERTY 97 

The report shows that such "cases are typical of hundreds 
engaged in the woolen trade. Among the miners of the 
district, who earn good wages, there is a large proportion 
who spend from ten shillings upwards on drink, and their 
homes suffer correspondingly as to furniture and other 
desirable comforts." Cases were found where there were 
only two or three pieces of furniture in the house, where 
the family had to sleep on the floor, though the income, if 
judiciously spent, would have been adequate to have pro- 
vided for ordinary needs. The experience of those who 
work in the slums is that as soon as they get the people 
living there to give up drink they see them move away to 
better quarters. 

Higher wages inadequate 

Labor leaders are coming to appreciate the fact that higher 
wages alone will not cure the ills from which wage earners 
are suffering. The famous labor leader, John F. Cuneen, 
says : 

"Labor unions engage halls, distribute literature, 
go to considerable expense for the discussion of 
economics, but at such gatherings there is one phase 
of the economic question upon which silence is 
maintained, and that is the liquor question. This 
question ought to be the foremost in discussion as to 
how to solve it rightly. It will do the labor unions 
little good if they fight to increase the working- 
man's wages if the workingman turns over to the 
liquor traffic the increased wage he receives. ,, 

Alcohol and pauperism 

In Stockholm, ninety per cent of the paupers in the work- 
houses are there as the result of alcohol and fifty per cent 
of those who receive outdoor relief need it for the same 
reason. As a usual thing, people do not drink because they 
are poor but are poor because they drink. In Manchester, 
England, Alderman McDougall, inquiring into the causes of 
pauperism, found that in fifty per cent of the four hundred 



98 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

and four individual paupers investigated, drink was the cause. 
Other investigations that have been made tell the same story. 
Replies to questions sent lately to every almshouse in the 
United States show that at least fifty-one per cent of the in- 
mates of almshouses become paupers through drink. Warden 
Roberts, of the New York almshouse on Blackwell's Island, 
considers that nine tenths of the inmates, numbering 2,593, 
came there through drink. 

Tudor Trevor, an English sociologist, says that seventy 
per cent of the paupers of England, costing the nation 
$50,000,000 annually, are the result of alcoholic drinking. 

Sickness, non-employment, desertions, imprisonment, and 
inefficiency are reckoned as causes of poverty. These evils 
are consequences of beer and whiskey drinking. 

Is poverty of itself a calamity? 

Those who have had wide experience in the work of 
organized charities do not consider poverty, in itself, a 
calamity from which it is impossible to recover, especially 
if health and moral character are not impaired. Sickness 
and accident may have caused the income temporarily to 
become inadequate. But it is usually the policy of the 
United Charities never to allow a family to be broken up 
because of poverty alone. Temporary relief may be given and 
with that all that may be needed is to arouse ambition, 
stimulate interest and self-activity, and create new ideals. 
Where these factors are united with physical strength, poverty 
can usually be overcome. But where, in addition to poverty, 
there is also the habit of liquor drinking, as long as that 
habit remains in control, the case is hopeless. For under 
such circumstances the moral appeal falls upon deaf ears 
and broken, impotent wills. Efforts are erratic. The one 
who drinks is unfitted for the long, steady, hard pull from 
poverty to economic independence. Dr. Wm. E. Shaw, of 
Cincinnati, in a letter in the Lancet Clinic, July 10, 1909, 
says : 



ALCOHOL A SOURCE OF POVERTY 99 

"My observation of those who used alcohol for 
the purpose of forgetting misery and poverty con- 
vinced me more than thirty years ago that the best 
way to escape poverty and misery was to begin the 
battle of life as a total abstainer, and I have seen no 
reason to change my mind." 

Drink causes a lack of the desire to work 

One effect of alcohol upon many who are even moderate 
drinkers is to rob them of the delight in work which is so 
frequently characteristic of those who are prosperous. The 
normal man and woman may dislike drudgery but find a 
present good in the performing of the necessary tasks. But 
the habitual drinker finds no pleasure in toil. It has lost 
its charm for him. In the Twenty-eighth Annual Report 
of the Associated Charities of Boston the statement is made 
that "most drunkards are bitterly afraid of hard work. The 
trip to the island, after the first sense of shame has worn 
off, becomes a mere quiet loafing time at the expense of the 
city. But the threat of Bridgewater has sent more than one 
East Boston drunkard to his knees, begging for mercy. 
Bridgewater means ten to fifteen hours of hard work each 
day." 

Records of a juvenile court 

J. J. McManaman, chief probation officer of Chicago's 
Juvenile Court, in summarizing the year's work, said : "Whis- 
key causes poverty. Poverty causes crime. That summar- 
izes the situation." The chief causes of so many children's 
being in court were pointed out to be intemperance and 
neglect rather than misfortune. A study of the cases showed 
that while the poverty of thirteen of the children was due to 
the immorality of the mother, that of one hundred and sixty 
was due to drunkenness of the father, ninety-two to drunken- 
ness of the mother, and sixty-three to the drunkenness of 
both. Fully seventy-five per cent could be traced to their 
origin in the neglect and drunkenness of parents. 



ioo THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

The teetotaler immune from the workhouse 

Dr. E. Claude Taylor, in trying to find out the number of 
abstainers who were present in workhouses, asked of those 
who had first-hand knowledge the following question : "Have 
you any (adult) life abstainers in your workhouse?" The 
answers were strikingly unanimous : "None known." "Out 
of sixteen hundred I have found one." "No." "Very few, 
and they seem to live longer than the others." "Never 
heard of any." "Not more than .3 per cent." "Occasionally 
met with; one or two in now." The extreme that is said on 
the other side is "Yes," and "A large number of the adult 
inmates assert that they are life-abstainers, or at the very 
most very moderate drinkers." "On two occasions I have 
gone into the dining-room of my own workhouse and 
asked any who had been abstainers any length of time to 
hold up a hand. On one occasion not one hand was held up ; 
on the other one an old lady of eighty-five years did so, as 
being a teetotaler for forty years, and one half-witted woman 
claimed to be. Apparently it is sufficient to be a teetotaler to 
insure almost certain safeguard from being driven into the 
workhouse." 

The case in Massachusetts 

In a remarkable report on "The Relation of the Liquor 
Traffic to Pauperism, Crime, and Insanity," Mr. Horace G. 
Wadlin, former chief of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor 
of Massachusetts, thus summarizes the facts ascertained : 

"Out of thirty-two hundred and thirty paupers — 
this being the total number found in the institutions 
during twelve consecutive months — twenty-one hun- 
dred and eight, or about sixty-five in every hundred 
(65.26 per cent) were addicted to the use of liquor. 
The excessive drinkers numbered five hundred and 
five, or about sixteen in every one hundred (15.63 
per cent) of all the paupers. The total abstainers 
numbered eight hundred and sixty-six, or about 
twenty-seven in every one hundred (26.81 per cent) 
of all the paupers. Of the total abstainers, however, 



ALCOHOL A SOURCE OF POVERTY 101 

four hundred and twenty-nine were minors, two 
hundred and eighty-one being under ten years of age. 
There were also thirty-one minors addicted to the 
use of liquor. Excluding all the minors, whether 
total abstainers or not, we have twenty-seven hundred 
and fifty-two paupers of adult years, of whom two 
thousand and seventy-seven, or about seventy-five in 
every one hundred (75.47 per cent), were addicted to 
the use of liquor, including five hundred and four 
excessive drinkers and fifteen hundred and seventy- 
three drinkers not classed as excessive. 

"Of the whole number of paupers, 47.74 per cent, 
or nearly forty-eight in every one hundred, had one 
or both parents intemperate. 

"Of the whole number 39.44 per cent, or about 
thirty-nine in every one hundred, attributed their 
pauperism to their own intemperate habits ; about 
five in every one hundred considered their pauperism 
due to the intemperance of their parents, one or both ; 
and several in every one hundred attributed their 
pauperism to the intemperance of those upon whom 
they were dependent, other than parents." 

Alcohol the indirect cause of burdens 

It is a fact recognized by leading medical authorities that 
the children of drinking parents are especially likely to 
contract tuberculosis. In the International Prize Essay, 
"Tuberculosis," in 1908, there occurs this statement by Dr. 
S. A. Knoff: "Alcoholism must be considered the most 
active cooperator of the deadly germ of tuberculosis." An 
investigation conducted by Professor G. von Bunge, of Basel, 
Switzerland, showed that of one hundred and forty-nine 
fathers who were occasional drinkers, 8.7 per cent of the 
children were tuberculous. Of one hundred and sixty-nine 
moderate drinkers, the percentage of tuberculous children 
was 10.7. Sixty-seven fathers who were immoderate drinkers 
were investigated and it was found that 16.4 per cent of 
the children had tuberculosis. 2J.J per cent of the children 
of sixty fathers who were confirmed drunkards were found 
to be afflicted with the white plague. The poverty which 
results from the use of alcohol makes it necessary frequently 



102 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

for families to live in rooms that have poor ventilation and 
that are overcrowded. The sanitary conditions are apt to be 
poor. The conditions of the drinker's home make his family 
especially susceptible to this and other diseases. Thus drink 
not only decreases the amount of money available to satisfy 
normal needs and unfits the wage earner to carry the physical, 
mental, and moral burdens of supporting a family, but it 
also increases the tendency toward sickness, deformity, feeble- 
mindedness, and degeneracy. The added burden of caring 
for those who thus fall below what is normal is a prolific — 
though indirect — cause of poverty. 

Increasing the fixed charges 

The question may well be asked, Who pays the increased 
cost to society, in the police departments, courts, State hos- 
pitals, prisons, jails, care of the insane and paupers that are 
occasioned by the liquor business? It is estimated that in 
New York City alone $1,650,000 is expended annually to 
arrest and care for cases of intoxication. It costs that one 
city nearly $100,000 annually just to try the persons charged 
with intoxication. The custodial care of persons arrested 
for intoxication costs a quarter of a million annually. The 
entire treatment of public intoxication in New York is 
$2,412,000 every year. The license fees pay about one half 
of the actual cost of drink to the State. This vast sum 
must be collected in various forms of taxation. The burden 
is shared by the man who pays rent and buys food. Thus 
the poor man finds it is more difficult to supply himself and 
those dependent upon him with the necessities of life. By 
adding to the public expenses the liquor business and its 
results add financial burdens to the already overburdened 
citizen. 

The principle of prevention 

In the broad modern movement to relieve society of its ills 
and its burdens, the emphasis is being placed upon preventive 



ALCOHOL A SOURCE OF POVERTY 103 

measures. The medical profession is giving much thought 
not only to the best methods of curing disease, but also to 
those of discovering and removing the sources of disease. 
If an epidemic of typhoid fever is found in a community, 
efforts are directed toward curing the cases that the con- 
tagion has already caused. But efforts are also concentrated 
upon the work of making it impossible for new cases to 
appear. This principle applied to charitable work has revo- 
lutionized the methods formerly adopted. The scientific spirit 
makes it necessary to trace out and get rid of the causes of 
poverty as well as to give direct and immediate assistance 
to the poor. Is the intelligent contributor to the Associated 
Charities or to the Church Poor Fund doing his full duty if 
he gives money to relieve the poor of the church or com- 
munity without doing something to terminate the period of 
need in those who receive his alms? If the liquor business 
is directly or indirectly responsible for half of the pauperism, 
if its vital connection with poverty has been scientifically 
demonstrated, then there rests upon charity workers the 
prudential responsibility of getting rid of that business. 
This is a preventive measure. It is removing the source. 
In the interest of efficiency it is necessary. 

Some Pertinent Questions 

What is poverty? 

What is the relation of poverty to income? 

What has been the experience of those who work in the 
slums regarding the giving up of drink by those living in 
poverty? 

What is the attitude of labor leaders toward the demand 
for higher wages? 

What proportion of pauperism has been found to be the 
result of drink? 

Why do the workers for the United Charities look upon 
poverty as being, in itself, an inadequate cause for breaking 
up a home? 



104 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

How does drink affect one's desire to work? 

What do the records of a juvenile court show as to the 
relation between drink and crime among young people? 

What is usually the teetotaler's relation to the workhouse? 

How is drink related to pauperism in Massachusetts? 

In what way does alcohol increase the financial burden of 
those poor people who do not drink? 

To what extent does alcohol cooperate with tuberculosis? 

What else should a philanthropist do besides giving money 
to relieve a case of poverty? 

Is a church justified in using the poor fund to fight the 
liquor business? 

Class Discussion 

First define what poverty is, showing its relation to income. 

Point out the effect of illegitimate or imprudent expendi- 
tures upon poverty. Show what a large proportion of 
pauperism is due to drink. 

Let the climax of the discussion center in showing that 
in the interest of the prevention of poverty and the more 
extreme forms of destitution and pauperism, the church and 
charity worker must spend some of their energy in getting 
rid of the liquor business. 

What Our Class Can Do 

Have some well-informed social worker address the class 
on the relation of drink to poverty in our community. 

Appoint one or two members of the class to study the 
subject of the poor of the church and report their findings 
at a subsequent meeting. 

Have a special study made on the relation of the liquor 
business to the high cost of living. 

If those who are appointed to look up facts concerning 
the influence of alcohol find that records are not carefully 
kept by the societies or organizations consulted, let them 
tactfully urge the importance of having such records de- 
pendable, up-to-date, and available. 



LESSON XI 

THE SOCIAL PHASE OF THE 
SALOON 

The Scripture Reference 

Brethren, even if a man be overtaken in any tres- 
pass, ye who are spiritual, restore such a one in a 
spirit of gentleness; looking to thyself, lest thou also 
be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so 
fulfill the law of Christ. For if a man thinketh himself 
to be something when he is nothing, he deceiveth him- 
self. But let each man prove his own work, and then 
shall he have his glorying in regard of himself alone, 
and not of his neighbor. For each man shall bear his 
own burden. 

But let him that is taught in the word communicate 
unto him that teacheth in all good things. Be not de- 
ceived ; God is not mocked : for whatsoever a man 
soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth 
unto his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption ; 
but he that soweth unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit 
reap eternal life. And let us not be weary in well- 
doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint 
not. So then, as we have opportunity, let us work 
that which is good toward all men, and especially to- 
ward them that are of the household of the faith. — 
Galatians 6. i-io. 

The Lesson 

The saloon and sociability 

As a means of expressing a feeling of sociability, the use 
of alcoholic drinks, it is well to state frankly, is quite 
thoroughly fixed in a large part of our current social customs. 
Among certain classes liquors have been used for ages at 
social functions, in clubs, in informal meetings, and in the 
home. Of recent years the saloon, the liquor-selling restau- 
rant, and the hotel have largely taken the place of home use, 
with the result that excessive drinking has been increased. 

105 



106 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

Frequently the family has been broken up, while at the 
same time a relatively small number of individuals do the 
drinking. Without regard to whether it is good or bad, or 
whether a better means of sociability might not readily be 
procured, alcoholic liquors do serve with a great many 
people as a popular method of trying to gain the friendship 
of companions and of expressing a feeling of fellowship. 

A service in spite of intoxication 

In this sense the saloon appeals to a fundamental social 
instinct — sociability. It supplies something really necessary 
in human life, it is true, but in quality a very shoddy article 
at a very high cost of money and morals. The saloon has 
seized upon social want and proceeds to supply it in its own 
way. The public-house problem is largely, by no means 
wholly, a question of forgotten needs, that is, of sociability 
needs. This ground the saloon has filled, or usurped, and 
these needs are there satisfied, not by, but in spite of, alcohol 
and intoxication. 

The test of ultimate worth 

Methods for the solution of the saloon problem as a part 
of the larger liquor problem, social and political, as we 
have it, must take the sociability feature into consideration. 
If there is a certain amount of usefulness in the saloon, it 
should be known. There is no use in going at the work 
blindly. If, on the other hand, the saloon is a powerful 
competitor with better means of sociability, and a source of 
social vice to the community, the good which it may do can 
be no excuse for the greater evils. Palliative measures will 
be found to be both insufficient and wrong. The welfare of 
society as a whole and the effects of the saloon upon it must 
be the only final test of its social worth. 

Patrons of the u social glass" 

The strongest plea that can be made for liquor is that it 
furnishes social pleasure. This it does, first, by means of 



THE SOCIAL PHASE OF THE SALOON 107 

the "social glass," to the two or three or more taking it 
together, and, second, by means of the saloon serving as a 
social center for certain classes of people who either prefer 
the kind of society to be found there, or who have, or who 
can find, no other place open to them. The people who 
respond in any important degree to the sociability features 
of the saloon are : 

(1) The more well-to-do or wealthy classes who distinctly 
prefer the sort of sociability that accompanies or follows 
alcoholic intoxication. 

(2) The outcast and degenerate of other classes who seek 
their associates among the ex-criminals, embryonic criminals, 
loafers, professional beggars, etc., of the low-down grog- 
geries. 

(3) A relatively small, but important class, of business 
men who use the saloon as a place for business appointments. 

(4) There yet remain the wage-earning classes — that large 
number of people who regard the saloon as a place of social 
intercourse. 

Among this last group the real problem is found. There 
are multitudes of houses, shacks, and apartments that only 
with superior taste and ingenuity can be transformed into 
homes. But both of these qualities are lacking. Moreover 
the financial resources make it impossible to entertain friends 
at home. There are no surroundings suggestive of hospi- 
tality and sociability. Those occupying this sort of home 
furnish the largest number in the total per capita consumption 
of liquors. Their opportunities for social enjoyment, apart 
from the saloon, are more limited, and so they are compelled 
to depend upon it more and more. In a word, it is this 
wage-earner, living on the verge of poverty, and he alone, 
who may claim the saloon as in any sense a real "social 
center." 

"The poor mans club" 
Here he finds relaxation after a long day in the dust and 



108 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

roar of the factory such as the crowded and slouchy rooms 
he calls home will not furnish. Here he can escape the 
crying children and get the companionship of men interested 
in the same things in which he is interested. There are 
games, cards, pool, reports from the faces and prizefights, 
sometimes music, and a warm place in which to enjoy them. 
There is no feeling of constraint; on the contrary, the 
manager is glad to have him remain so long as he is spending 
money. All these enjoyments of an evening can be pur- 
chased for the exceedingly small price of a few beers, or 
even for a single glass, with a free lunch thrown in. The 
saloon is a democratic institution, open freely to everyone, 
and criticizing no one. It has therefore come to be called 
"the poor man's club." Efforts to do away with it are 
resented as an attack upon the poor man by the more well- 
to-do. There is a strong and unreasonable opposition, often 
amounting to hatred, among laboring men, especially the 
more unskilled, against temperance and prohibition workers, 
for this very reason. It is needless to say that this is fostered 
by the liquor dealers themselves, and an appeal to class 
antagonism is made to support the business. 

Reasons for popularity 

The low cost for which the saloon furnishes its numerous 
attractions is one of the strong features in making it popular. 
One reason why laboring men do not form clubs of their 
own is because they cannot afford the membership dues that 
would be required to pay for well-furnished quarters and 
equipment for a limited group of men. Yet no one doubts 
for a minute that the saloon keeper does all this on a wider 
basis than that of a club purely as a business venture, often 
furnishing to lodges, labor unions, and other organizations 
rooms heated and lighted, near the saloon, absolutely free 
of cost. It is inconceivable that the money which pays for 
the drinks, plus the "attractions" provided by the saloon, 
would not pay for the attractions alone if the drinks were 



THE SOCIAL PHASE OF THE SALOON 109 

absent. How can we help concluding that while the saloon 
now acts as a sort of poor man's club, it is the club which, 
taking advantage of his poverty and of his desire for intoxi- 
cants, makes him pay more for his social life than any other 
class of people with moderate or low earnings. As a promi- 
nent Boston liquor dealer has said : 

"If the saloon is the poor man's club, then I con- 
tend that the dues are too high ; it costs him too much 
to keep the club steward in a prosperous condition, 
and therefore should be disbanded for the benefit 
of the club members, and their families, and the 
community at large." 

Counter attractions 

"The negative and destructive method employed in social 
reform movements should be accompanied or followed by 
positive and constructive ones." The application of this 
sociological principle to the saloon question calls for "some 
broad, rational, and practical method of counterbalancing the 
various motives that lead men to patronize the saloon." The 
idea of a "substitute," however, in the opinion of Professor 
J. M. Barker, of Boston University, should not be limited to 
a rival business in competition with the saloon, a social 
institution run next door or across the street to draw men 
away from it, but to satisfy the motives, so far as they are 
worthy ones, or indicate any real need, in other or more 
natural ways. 

Suggested substitutes 

There are many organizations and clubs, both philanthropic 
and self-supporting, which provide healthful amusement and 
recreation. These, intentionally or unintentionally, serve as 
counter attractions for the saloon to some extent. But the 
great need of our large cities is for more, many more, and 
better ones — those in which there will be more inducements 
as well as more of a feeling of freedom on the part of those 



no THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

for whom they are established. The most successful of 
these institutions at present are moving-picture shows, coffee- 
houses, lunchrooms, reading-rooms, bowling alleys and other 
athletic games not in connection with saloons, recreation 
centers, social settlements, the better grade of theaters and 
parks, especially the small parks in dense residence neighbor- 
hoods. These all supply opportunity for sociability of a pure 
kind away from the temptations of the saloon. But their 
number is all too meager and the hours of closing often too 
early. The Young Men's Christian Associations to some 
extent serve in this capacity, but their field is largely limited 
to clerical and railroad men and strange young men of the 
better class coming from the country and small towns. They 
do not to any marked extent counteract the attractions of the 
saloon to those who are in greatest need of help. 

Complete absence of liquors 

The essential principle of this movement must be the 
supplying of healthful recreation and relaxation free from 
the sale of intoxicating liquors. There can be no temporary 
surrender of this principle in favor of the lighter alcoholics, 
or increased temptation to the young is sure to follow. If 
the lightest beer should be served in connection with the best 
of amusements, it might be a good means of weaning off the 
old toper, but it would be the fatal attracting influence that 
would start thousands of young men and boys to acquiring 
the alcohol habit under respectable surroundings. Anything 
that does this is sure to increase later the number of regular 
saloon patrons who go there for liquors alone. The absence 
of liquors must be complete, or the attraction will be toward, 
instead of away from, the saloon. 

The demands of the self-respecting man 

The man who takes his recreation and social pleasure at 
the saloon feels that he is paying for what he gets. And he 
certainly is paying full price ! The saloon is not run for 



THE SOCIAL PHASE OF THE SALOON in 

charity, but for business. The independent wage-earner, even 
if he is quite poor, knows this and appreciates it. If he is 
at all self-respecting, he resents the doing of anything for him 
by outsiders with the air of charity about it. The rightly 
organized counter attraction will take note of this fact by 
requiring that the accommodations which it gives shall be 
good, and that payment, at least in part, shall be insisted 
upon. But the man himself must remember that a self- 
respecting man cannot secure the social enjoyments he so 
much needs while so large a share of his meager earnings 
goes for beer. 

Fixing responsibility 

The task of providing counter attractions rightly belongs 
to the school, the church, the popular lecture, the night and 
trade schools, the trade unions, the private clubs and organ- 
izations and the thousand and one forms of social enjoyment 
open to healthful society. This moral responsibility cannot 
be shifted. It is the saloon that, for financial ends, has 
usurped this ground and that tends to run sociability into 
vice. 

A^o substitute possible 

With substitution measures alone, the power of the saloon 
to corrupt society will remain practically unbroken. Its 
power to offer attractions is unlimited. "The saloons that 
attract most men are those that harbor gambling and shelter 
prostitutes. The saloons with concert halls, where so many 
men and women are lured to drink and dance, have their 
walls decorated with suggestive and indecent pictures, and 
one hears songs of the most revolting character. The whole 
atmosphere reveals a total lack of modesty and common 
decency." No philanthropic or semi-philanthropic, or even 
legitimate business enterprise, can counteract the fascination 
of the average saloon, with such "attractions," combined with 
the appetite for liquors, as it offers to vast numbers of people 



ii2 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

in all grades of society. The saloon is not the "poor man's 
club/' It is primarily the drink-loving man's club, whether 
poor or rich. So long as alcohol is one of the forces of the 
saloon there is and can be no substitute for it. Furthermore, 
social welfare demands that there shall be no "substitute." 
The change must be absolute. 

Drink the chief attraction 

The following bit of testimony is exceedingly valuable as 
showing the attitude of that class of men most dependent 
of all upon the saloon for their social enjoyment if they are 
to have any at all. Mr. C. H. Stocking, of Minneapolis, 
superintendent of the Union City Mission, on December 4, 
1905, conducted a meeting of one hundred and fifty men, 
most of whom lived in lodging houses, and all of whom were 
regular drinkers. The object was a free-for-all discussion of 
the saloon and substitutes for it. Specific questions, after 
abundant discussion, were voted upon as follows : 

"Do men first go to the saloon to enjoy a social 
Tiour, or do they go there to take a drink ?" The 
vote was, drink, fifty; social hour, fifteen. 

"If all the saloons in the city ceased to sell liquor, 
DUt kept every attraction they now have, could they 
retain one tenth of their customers?" Only eight 
voted affirmatively. 

"How many of the men here to-night go to the 
saloon for the sake of the liquor sold there?" One 
hundred and five hands were raised. 

"Can you suggest any substitute for the saloon?" 
The vote stood, "Yes, thirty; No, fifty." 

On further discussion, a clean-kept lodging house with 
opportunity for amusements at a reasonable rate seemed to 
be most desired. A few wanted places where pure liquors 
could be sold. But all agreed upon one thing — that nothing 
furnishing the accommodations and attractions and comforts 
of the saloon with intoxicating liquors left out would be of 



THE SOCIAL PHASE OF THE SALOON 113 

any special interest to them. The other things were good, 
but they would not take the place of the drink. 

Why the drink habit is begun 

The medical and surgical report of the Bellevue and allied 
hospitals of New York, published in 1904, gives the following 
answers given by two hundred and forty-six patients to the 
question, "Why did you begin to drink ?" 

Sociability — 52.5 per cent. 
Trouble — 13 per cent. 
Medical use — 9.3 per cent. 
Occupation — 7 per cent. 
Taught by elders — 7 per cent. 
Out of work — 5 per cent. 
Unknown — 5 per cent. 
To be thought sporty — 1.2 per cent. 

The saloon antagonistic to man's social life 

Man is incurably a social being. He is restless if alone. 
To seek out and find those of his own kind is natural to him. 
And when he is with his fellows, he uses various means of 
expressing his sociability. Because the saloon has been the 
meeting place of large numbers of men — especially of those 
who are poor and who have no other congenial place to 
which to go — their instinct for sociability has been the point 
of approach for the liquor interests. The saloon has capital- 
ized man's love of friends and yearning for social intercourse. 
The drinking of alcoholic beverages has produced feelings 
that seemed to harmonize with sociability. The ignorant or 
careless youth has thus had the drink habit fastened upon 
him. Then has followed the deplorable result of his being 
robbed of the highest capacity for friendship and social inter- 
course. Hence the fight against the saloon should carefully 
guard against any plan that deprives men of their oppor- 
tunities to express their feelings of sociability. The effort to 
take away the easy opportunity to get drink should never be 
interpreted as an effort to repress man's true social instinct. 



ii4 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

Some Pertinent Questions 

Should a man cultivate sociability? Why? 

What responsibility has society in meeting this social need 
by the maintenance of public institutions? 

Are ordinary people capable of furnishing adequate amuse- 
ment for themselves? 

Do they know how to play, or must they have others play 
for them? 

In what way is it possible to solve the saloon problem and 
take no account of the opportunity it presents for sociability? 

Who patronize the saloon? 

Which of these classes is most dependent upon it? 

Why does the saloon appeal the most strongly to the poor 
laborer? 

Why are prohibition advocates hated by patrons of the 
saloon ? 

What is the difference between a "substitute" and a "rival" ? 

Why is liquor-selling in the "substitute" unjustifiable? 

What is the chief attraction in the saloon? 

Does this prove that it is an unsocial institution? 

Class Discussion 

Bring out clearly that man is a social being. 

Man's social needs make some kind of social institution 
necessary. 

The saloon is meeting these needs in part, in spite of the 
fact that its chief aim is unsocial; that is, liquor-selling. 

What Our Class Can Do 

Be on the lookout for strangers. 

Study the social needs of the men of our community. 
Try definitely to meet these needs on week nights as well 
as on Sundays. 



LESSON XII 

SOME PAST FAILURES AND THE 
LESSONS THEY TEACH 

The Scripture Reference 

Woe to the crown of pride of the drunkards of 
Ephraim, and to the fading flower of his glorious 
beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley of 
them that are overcome with wine ! Behold, the Lord 
hath a mighty and strong one; as a tempest of hail, 
a destroying storm, as a tempest of mighty waters 
overflowing, will he cast down to the earth with the 
hand. The crown of pride of the drunkards of 
Ephraim shall be trodden under foot : and the fading 
flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head 
of the fat valley, shall be as the first-ripe fig before 
the summer ; which when he that looketh upon it 
seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up. In 
that day will Jehovah of hosts become a crown of 
glory, and a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of 
his people; and a spirit of justice to him that sitteth 
in judgment, and strength to them that turn back the 
battle at the gate. 

And even these reel with wine, and stagger with 
strong drink; the priest and the prophet reel with 
strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they 
stagger with strong drink; they err in vision, they 
stumble in judgment. For all tables are full of vomit 
and filthiness, so that there is no place clean. 

Whom will he teach knowledge? and whom will 
he make to understand the message? them that are 
weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts? 
For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept; 
line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a 
little. 

Nay, but by men of strange lips and with another 
tongue will he speak to this people ; to whom he said, 
This is the rest, give ye rest to him that is weary; 
and this is the refreshing : yet they would not hear. 

115 



n6 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

Therefore shall the word of Jehovah be unto them 
precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon 
line, line upon line; here a little, there a little; that 
they may go, and fall backward, and be broken, and 
snared, and taken. 

Wherefore hear the word of Jehovah, ye scoffers, 
that rule this people that is in Jerusalem: Because 
ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, 
and with Sheol are we at agreement; when the over- 
flowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come 
unto us ; for we have made lies our refuge, and under 
falsehood have we hid ourselves: therefore thus 
saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I lay in Zion for a 
foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner 
stone of sure foundation : he that believeth shall not 
be in haste. — Isaiah 28. 1-16. 

The Lesson 
Lincoln's hesitation 

When it was first proposed to impose a federal tax upon 
the manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquors, Abraham 
Lincoln looked upon the proposition with profound misgiv- 
ings. He was afraid that by the payment of large sums of 
money for internal revenue, the men engaged in that business 
would acquire a political and social standing not then ac- 
corded them. Before the liquor business was thus legalized, 
the men engaged in it were naturally looked down upon. 
Even though the real nature of alcohol was not then under- 
stood, some of its manifest ultimate results were apparent. 
In many communities those who sold drink to their fellow 
citizens could not hope to mingle in the best society. Their 
political influence was small. Lincoln feared that the making 
of such men legally respectable by the federal government 
would tend to give them the political and social respecta- 
bility of which they were not worthy. The man who pays 
large amounts of money which the federal government re- 
ceives and uses feels a new sense of dignity and importance. 
He is supposed to relieve all citizens of a part of their burden 
of taxation. He makes political and social demands that, 



LESSONS TAUGHT BY PAST FAILURES 117 

under other conditions, would be impossible and absurd. But 
the financial exigencies of the national government were such 
that extraordinary measures had to be taken to raise revenue. 
It was this pressure that led the far-sighted President to 
hesitate before consenting to such measures. 

The development of the license idea 

Since that time the original purpose of license has been 
modified. Immediately after the privilege of manufacturing 
and selling liquor on a large scale had been legalized, the 
liquor interests became politically active and commercially 
aggressive. Then it was that communities, in the interest of 
self-defense from the results of alcohol, perverted the original 
purpose of license which was primarily that of raising greatly 
needed revenue and used it as a regulative and restrictive 
measure. In the light of subsequent events, the fundamental 
absurdity of it all is clearly seen. The very method under 
which the liquor business had grown rapidly was used to 
suppress or regulate it. The stimulus which had caused it 
to become commercially aggressive was increased under a 
policy of higher license fees. The amounts of money paid 
for the privilege of conducting the business had given that 
business a standing before the law that previously it had not 
enjoyed. Those amounts were increased with the hope that 
the influence of the business would be less pernicious. It 
has been under the license system that the liquor business 
has come to be a political peril, a social corrupter, a com- 
mercial vampire, an organizer and stimulater of the most 
dangerous and unpatriotic elements in our national life. 

Domination of commercialism 

The evil results of the stimulation of the motive of com- 
mercialism under the license system can never be measured. 
When a saloon keeper has to pay one thousand dollars for 
the privilege of selling liquor during twelve months, that 
added financial pressure tends to make him lose even the 



n8 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

relatively small humane and benevolent impulses which other- 
wise he might have expressed. The cold-blooded way in 
which liquor is sold to men who have already lost, for the 
time, the use of their natural or acquired moral judgments, 
and whose prudential judgments are evidently no longer with 
them, is one of the most disgraceful aspects of so-called 
civilization. When the commercial instinct, under the pres- 
sure of the high license system, has come completely to 
dominate the life of the brewer or saloon keeper, the suffer- 
ings of innocent children, the physical corruption of those 
yet unborn, the depriving of children of much needed educa- 
tional advantages, the robbing of the family of its needed 
food and shelter cause no hesitation, no sigh of regret. A 
naturally strong man's hand may shake as he reaches out for 
the glass that will unfit him for his work, decrease his power 
of endurance, make him liable to accident, but the dominating 
love of money blinds the liquor dealer to it all 

The liquor business and foreign missions 

Thus the humanitarian impulses become too weak to give 
moral tone to the liquor dealer's conduct. He takes no 
interest in the great benevolent enterprises. While the 
churches are sending millions of money and hundreds of 
precious lives to lift the burdens of superstition, ignorance, 
and suffering from the shoulders of non-Christian nations, 
he capitalizes their ignorance, their interest in everything 
coming from a nominally Christian nation, and creates among 
the defenseless heathen peoples new markets for his poison. 
In some sections of the Far East the total influence of the 
impact of American civilization thus far has been degrading 
rather than uplifting. Bishop Homer C. Stuntz, of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, after years of experience on 
mission fields, declares that one of the greatest victories that 
could come to the missionary enterprise would be the elimina- 
tion of the shrewd, aggressive, heartless spirit of commercial- 
ism from the liquor business of America. Some leaders have 



LESSONS TAUGHT BY PAST FAILURES 119 

gone even farther than this in their recommendation that 
the Christian missionary forces might well temporarily turn 
part of their money and influence into the enterprise of 
ridding our so-called Christian civilization of the liquor 
business. 

What greed has wrought 

Thus under the license system the liquor dealer or manu- 
facturer has come to look upon his business in terms of 
money only. Greed has become the tyrant of his life. He 
cares not how much suffering and loss result from his 
business as long as the money in large enough quantities 
comes into his till. Having paid his license fee, consciously 
or unconsciously he throws the moral responsibility for the 
results of his business upon the government. He feels free 
to prosecute his business with all of the ingenuity and perse- 
verance he possesses. He advertises extensively and shrewdly. 
He strives to secure strategic locations for his saloon. Any 
movement to close his place of business on certain days or 
hours is stubbornly resisted. He tries to make his contact 
with men and women as broad and as suggestive as possible. 
The experiences of others in the same business are at his 
disposal and he makes use of them. Thus the selling of 
alcoholic beverages has developed into an art, and the poor, 
defenseless consumer is unable to withstand the temptations 
with which he is surrounded. The deliberate and skillful 
efforts to win new recruits reveal the moral degeneracy of 
those who, under the license system, have become absolutely 
dominated by money-making impulses. 

License fees do not cover the cost of liquor drinking 

But the license system has not only caused the abnormal' 
commercialization of the liquor business, it also has failed in 
that the original purpose which caused it to be introduced is 
no longer achieved. It is no longer a source of income to 
the State. The liquor business, under this system, has 



120 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

developed in such ways that for every dollar received in 
license fees two dollars must be paid out in caring for those 
who, because of alcohol and its effects, are thrown back upon 
the State for care and support. An investigation was made 
in 1908 for the Royal Commission on the Care and Control 
of Feeble-minded in Birmingham, England. It was found 
that in the two hundred and fifty cases investigated 41.6 
per cent had one or both parents who were alcoholic. The 
public care of the feeble-minded children whose defects were 
due to the use of alcohol by their parents must be reckoned 
upon before one can say whether or not the license system 
is a financial success. Another careful investigation showed 
that eighty- two and one half per cent of the children of 
alcoholic parents were defective — that is, were idiotic, de- 
formed, epileptic, or otherwise degenerate. If alcoholism 
leads to poverty, and if such parents are unable to care for 
such offspring, they become public charges. The money to 
pay for their care cannot be taken out of the license fees, 
for they are inadequate. Either philanthropy or the State 
must pay the bill. 

Moral losses of the State 

But there are some things which the State or community 
loses because of alcohol which money cannot replace and for 
which it is not an adequate compensation. The financial 
cost of the increased crime, pauperism, sickness, and help- 
lessness is not to be compared with those other losses which 
cause moral, economic, educational, and religious resources 
to become depleted. When a business comes to be so ag- 
gressive and skillful as to become a national menace because 
of its undermining the very foundations upon which the 
permanency and stability of that nation rests, the situation 
becomes infinitely more serious than any financial loss can 
be. No amount of money can repay the harm done when 
future American citizens, who have recently arrived from 
foreign homes, live for the first and most impressionable 



LESSONS TAUGHT BY PAST FAILURES 121 

years in an atmosphere of political corruption such as that 
which is found in the ordinary saloon. Under a democratic 
form of government, the hope of the State is the intelligence, 
physical welfare, and moral character of the ordinary citizen. 
Any system that permits an institution to exist and to 
corrupt and destroy the character of the voter in whose 
hands is the destiny of the nation is self-destructive. It 
cannot but end in ultimate failure. 

Centralization of political corruption 

Another weakness of the license system is seen in the fact 
that it has made possible the concentration of political 
influences in the hands of a few men of unpatriotic motives. 
The political boss whose motives are predominantly immoral 
is a political danger. When the government offers for sale 
the privileges of selling alcoholic beverages the money con- 
sideration is such as to make it possible for the brewers and 
distillers to gain control of a number of saloons. It often 
happens that the man who wishes to become a saloon keeper 
has not enough money to pay for the license, the costly 
fixtures, and the rent. So the brewer makes him his agent. 
The man with large capital provides for the initial outlay 
and thereby comes into control. Since the saloon is the 
rallying point for corrupt political influences, it is easily seen 
how this control by the brewer leads to the centralization of 
dangerous political factors into the hands of those who have 
lost their interest in the public welfare. 

False sense of security 

Again, the license system has stood in the way of a final 
solution of the liquor problem, for it has caused many in- 
telligent voters to have a false sense of security. Men have 
voted for high license, thinking thereby to restrict or to 
control properly the sale of liquor and have consequently 
been led to look with indifference upon really corrective 
measures. They have believed a falsehood and have thus 



122 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

become prejudiced and unable to give a just judgment con- 
cerning the situation. To this one fact more than to any 
other, in some States, is due the tardiness and weakness of 
reliably educative campaigns. Any great reform must be 
preceded by years of popular education. The facts must be 
put in attractive form and scattered broadcast. Methods of 
education suited to the local conditions must be discovered 
and applied. Men must be given opportunities to get hold 
of the facts and to study them. But before an educative cam- 
paign adequate to prepare for the final and actual solution 
of the liquor problem is possible, the prejudices and mis- 
judgments that have grown up around the license system 
must be overcome. 

The failure properly to recognize man's social nature 

Another lesson which past experience has taught is that 
the community must feel the responsibility for providing 
wholesome public places to meet natural social needs. In 
many cities much of the infamous success of the saloon has 
been due to the fact that it has offered a place where men 
and women could easily meet others of their own kind. But 
why should such places of public gathering be poisoned with 
the atmosphere of alcohol? Why should man's normal 
instinct of sociability be the impulse that leads him to the 
very place where that instinct is perverted and immeasurably 
degraded? It is not necessary that centers which are fur- 
nished with all necessary social attractions, supply alcoholic 
drinks. Sociability is not dependent upon drinking. Ex- 
periments have been made showing "clearly that what most 
people really want is social intercourse in a suitable place, 
without vexatious limitations," and "free from fussy inter- 
ference." In the city of Letchworth, England, where such 
centers were successfully maintained, there were no "drink 
trains" taking the people to other nearby cities where liquors 
could be bought, trade was not driven away, drinking in the 
homes was not increased, drinking places "on the fringe" of 



LESSONS TAUGHT BY PAST FAILURES 123 

the territory thus ministered to did not multiply. On the 
contrary, six in that locality had to go out of business. 

The need of temperance education 

Still another lesson which the history of the movement 
thus far has taught is that a nation-wide, intelligent, practical, 
and persistent campaign of popular education is necessary. 
For years the Woman's Christian Temperance Union has 
taught the boys and girls the dangers of intemperance. 
Their motto has been, "If we save the children to-day we 
shall have saved the nations to-morrow." But many of the 
economic, political, social, and criminal aspects of the liquor 
business are beyond the comprehension of children. The 
years of education have laid the basis for a new campaign, 
giving to the voters of the nation the facts that should guide 
them in performing their immediate duties. Back of the 
successful Foreign Missionary enterprise is a systematic cam- 
paign of education. The people of the churches, for the 
most part, are informed concerning the needs and plans of 
the Missionary Boards. The voters of the nation and those 
who are responsible for public opinion will not rise to meet 
successfully the modern crisis unless a more aggressive and 
far-reaching system of temperance education is carried on. 

Some Pertixext Questioxs 

What was Lincoln's attitude toward the proposition tc 
raise revenue by a tax upon liquor? 

How has the original license idea been altered? 

W r hat are some of the evil results of the spirit of com- 
mercialism that has characterized the license system? 

What is the significance of liquor exportation to non- 
Christian countries? 

When the motive of greed dominates a liquor seller, how 
does he conduct his business? 

To what extent do the license fees cover the entire cost 
of drink? 



£24 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

What moral losses have resulted from the system of grant- 
ing licenses? 

How has this system made possible the centralization of 
political corruption? 

How has it stood in the way of the final solution of the 
liquor problem? 

How has the saloon appealed to man's social instincts? 

Is it wise to abolish the saloon and not recognize these 
social needs of the community? 

Why is a new campaign of temperance education needed? 

Class Discussion 

The purpose of the position of this lesson in the entire 
course is to prepare the members of the class for the one that 
follows. While it is well to emphasize the three mistakes 
of (i) trying to regulate the liquor business by means of 
license, (2) disregarding the natural social needs of the 
community, and (3) the failure to conduct a suitable cam- 
paign of education, special stress should be placed upon the 
first. It is the inherent weakness of the license system as 
such that should be made clear. The various points that 
indicate what constitutes the weakness of that system should 
be brought out with sufficient rapidity to insure their all 
being presented. 

What Our Class Can Do 

Collect information showing how the license system has 
failed in our community (if saloon licenses are granted), 
and have this information in suitable form and ready to be 
used in the connection with the next vote on the license 
question. 

Have some one investigate what the Protestant Episcopal 
Church is doing in the way of providing substitutes for the 
saloons. Report to the class. 

Plan a local campaign of education on the modern and 
scientific aspects of the liquor problem. 



LESSON XIII 

AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTI- 
TUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 

The Scripture Reference 

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth : for the 
first heaven and the first earth are passed away; and 
the sea is no more. And I saw the holy city, new 
Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, 
made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And 
I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold 
the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall 
dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and 
God himself shall be with them, and be their God : 
and he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes ; 
and death shall be no more; neither shall there be 
mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more : the first 
things are passed away. And he that sitteth on the 
throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he 
saith, Write : for these words are faithful and true. 
And he said unto me, They are come to pass. I am 
the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. 
I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain 
of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall 
inherit these things; and I will be his God, and he 
shall be rny son. But for the fearful, and unbelieving, 
and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and 
sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part shall 
be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone; 
which is the second death. — Revelation 21. 1-8. 

The Lesson 
Cooperation on a grand scale 

Step by step, against tremendous difficulties and the most 
terrific opposition, the forces that have aimed to prohibit the 
manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquors for beverage pur- 
poses have made their way. The Prohibition Party, The 

125 



126 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

Woman's Christian Temperance Union, The Anti-Saloon 
League, The Good Templars, The Anti-License Leagues, 
and many other organizations, each in its own way and with 
admirable courage and self-sacrifice, have, at last, come to 
see eye to eye. One grand common purpose now is placed 
before them, and all, with renewed hope and enthusiasm, 
are making splendid contributions to the final victory. 

Progress by State legislation 

It was very natural that the first line of attack should be 
the saloons in the rural districts. In almost every State 
this program was followed out, until to-day it is difficult to 
find a retail liquor establishment outside of incorporated 
villages or cities. 

The next step, naturally, was against the liquor traffic in 
the incorporated villages of the several States, and as a 
result of the work which has been done along this line, 
through the medium of local option laws, municipal ordinances 
and court decrees, there are approximately sixteen thousand 
incorporated villages in the United States under no-license. 

The next step was the effort to clean up the counties, and 
as a result of the county local option laws which have been 
put into force during the past few years, of the twenty-eight 
hundred and fifty-six counties in the United States, over 
seventeen hundred have abolished the saloons. 

The next step in the States containing large cities was the 
fight against the liquor traffic in these centers of population, 
while the next step in the rural States was naturally for 
State-wide Prohibition. 

As a result of these efforts, there are to-day more than 
five hundred cities having a population of five thousand or 
more, where saloons have been abolished, and almost two 
hundred cities having a population of ten thousand or more 
now under no-license. There are, moreover, fourteen States 
with an aggregate population of almost twenty millions where 
the people have adopted Prohibition. 



AMEND THE CONSTITUTION 127 

Progress under federal legislation 

The fight to secure federal legislation, as well as the en- 
forcement of anti-liquor laws already on the federal statute 
books, has been in many respects much more difficult than 
the struggle in the several States. Little by little, however, 
the federal government has come to recognize and respond 
to the demands of the people. The Prohibition of the sale of 
liquors to Indians and in the Indian countries has been 
enforced in the past few years as never before. The canteen 
has been excluded from the" navy and the army. The sale 
of liquors in State and national soldiers' homes has become 
a thing of the past. Liquor-selling in the national Capitol at 
Washington has been prohibited. The stringent anti-liquor 
laws in Alaska during the past few years have been enforced. 
The C. O. D. shipments of intoxicating liquor by express 
companies and other interstate carriers have been stopped, 
and numerous other measures against the evils resulting from 
the sale and use of intoxicating liquors have been put into 
effect. 

In spite of all this progress, however, the federal government 
until now has given its protection to speakeasy keepers, blind 
pig operators, and anti-liquor law violators generally in the 
several States, through the channels of interstate commerce. 
The temperance forces for twelve years have been trying to 
secure an enactment by Congress that would permit the 
States through their police powers to enforce their own anti- 
liquor laws without the interference of the federal govern- 
ment through the medium of interstate commerce. After 
long years of persistent and determined effort, the Kenyon- 
Webb bill prohibiting from interstate commerce the shipment 
of intoxicating liquors intended to be used in violation of 
law, has been enacted, and has become law. 

The next step 

The logical next step in the progress of this temperance 
movement is the submission by Congress to the severaJ States 



128 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

of an amendment to the federal constitution, which, when 
ratified by three fourths of the States, will prohibit the manu- 
facture and sale of intoxicating liquors throughout the nation. 
The constitution provides that any amendment to that instru- 
ment submitted by Congress shall become effective when 
three fourths of the States, either by their Legislatures or by 
a special vote of the people, shall ratify the action of Con- 
gress. To secure federal Prohibition by this route, therefore, 
would require ratification by thirty-six States. The fourteen 
States which have already adopted Prohibition would promptly 
join in the ratification of such a constitutional amendment. 
The action by twenty-two other States would be necessary 
before the amendment could go into effect. These States 
would need to be lined up one at a time — the temperance 
forces of the nation concentrating on one State after another 
until the necessary number is secured. 

The people are ready 

Those who have followed the progress of the temperance 
movement during the past decade realize that the people are 
ready to concentrate on such a fight for national Prohibition. 
Already more than forty-six million people are living in 
Prohibition territory, and more than seventy per cent of the 
entire area of the United States is under no-license. Nor 
do these figures represent the real strength of the anti-liquor 
forces in the nation. For instance, in the fourteen Prohibition 
States the majority in favor of Prohibition is overwhelming, 
while in a score of other States the liquor traffic is holding 
on by reason of a bare majority; in many cases accounted 
for by the failure of a large number of temperance voters 
to go to the polls. 

In addition to the fourteen States now under Prohibition, 
there are seventeen other States in which from fifty to ninety 
per cent of the population is living under no-license. There 
are thirteen other States in which between twenty-five and 
fifty per cent of the population is living under no-license, and 



AMEND THE CONSTITUTION 129 

the remaining States have large sections of territory and a 
large proportion of the population which by one means or 
another have excluded the traffic. In fact, it is conservatively 
estimated that sixty per cent of the voters of the United States 
are in favor of the abolition of the liquor traffic. 

What is required 

The fight to secure an amendment to the constitution, 
however, will not be an easy one. It means that the tem- 
perance forces will face the same sort of conflict in every 
congressional district as they have been compelled to face in 
every State legislative district in the effort to secure State 
legislation. Each man who voted for the Kenyon-Webb bill 
in Congress has already been spotted; the liquor interests of 
the country will not spare efforts or money to secure his 
defeat. This issue will present itself in practically every 
election in every congressional district of the United States 
from this time forward, and it will be necessary for the 
temperance and moral forces to be so organized in every 
congressional district as to insure a majority in Congress in 
favor of submitting this whole proposition to the people in 
the several States. 

Liquor no longer a necessity 

Scientific investigations and experiments along various lines 
have finally established the fact that intoxicating liquors are 
no longer necessary for any purpose. For long years, the 
mistaken idea that intoxicating liquors were essential for 
medicinal, pharmaceutical, sacramental, or scientific purposes 
fooled the public. The great hospitals of the world, how- 
ever, during the past twenty years, have greatly reduced the 
use of intoxicants. Many of the greatest medical scientists 
of this and other countries have discontinued altogether the 
use of intoxicating liquors. Denatured alcohol is largely 
taking the place of spirits in the arts. Hundreds of drug 
stores have ceased to sell the stuff, the great chain of Liggett 



130 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

drug stores throughout the United States just a few weeks 
ago having published a large advertisement in the leading 
papers of twenty-eight cities of the United States announcing 
that from that time forward intoxicating liquors would not 
be sold in any Liggett drug store. 

The operations of a law passed in Kansas about four years 
ago prohibiting the sale of liquors for any purpose except 
for sacramental use, which was ridiculed at the time by many 
fair-minded men, has fully demonstrated that the sale of in- 
toxicating liquors for even medicinal or mechanical purposes 
is not necessary. In short, it has been demonstrated beyond 
the question of a doubt that intoxicating liquors do not in 
any sense come under the head of necessities, and thus the 
last faint argument for their continued manufacture and sale 
has failed. 

Revenue not now essential 

Furthermore, the income tax amendment to the United 
States constitution, which has just been ratified by two thirds 
of the States, will, at a conservative estimate, increase the 
revenues of the United States government from $100,000,000 
to $150,000,000 a year. 

If there ever was an excuse for drawing from the liquor 
traffic of this country the money necessary to run the United 
States Government, that excuse will no longer hold, for the 
income tax alone will provide almost as much money as the 
government receives each year in revenue from the liquor 
traffic. 

From the time the federal revenue tax was put on the 
liquor traffic, fifty years ago, one of the favorite pro-liquor 
arguments has been to the effect that the government cannot 
run without the revenue derived from this traffic. If the 
United States was ever in this condition where it was abso- 
lutely dependent upon such revenue, certainly that time has 
long since passed. The federal reports for the last fiscal 
year show the ordinary government receipts to have been 



AMEND THE CONSTITUTION 131 

$691,140,455, while the ordinary government disbursements 
were only $654,804,625, showing the income of the United 
States government to have been almost $40,000,000 in excess 
of the government expenses for the year. 

Defenders of the Constitution 

The friends of temperance reform pressing for needed anti- 
liquor legislation both in State and national legislative bodies, 
have constantly been met with the cry that all such legislation 
"is unconstitutional." It is perhaps safe to say that not a 
single anti-liquor law from a search and seizure or other 
enforcement measure to a Prohibition statute, has ever been 
presented to a legislative body in this country that it has not 
been declared unconstitutional by the members of the legal 
profession who for one reason or another have seen fit to 
ally themselves with the liquor crowd. Yet, of all these 
hundreds of laws that have been enacted, to find one that 
has been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of 
the United States is like looking for a needle in a haystack. 
United States Senator Sutherland and others, who led the 
fight against the Kenyon-Webb bill in the United States 
Senate, w r ere loud in their condemnation of present liquor 
abuses. They were perfectly willing, according to their 
declarations, to do anything which would be constitutional 
to relieve the present situation. Senator Sutherland declared 
that if by his single pronouncement all intoxicating liquors 
could be put in the bottom of the ocean, it would promptly 
be done ; the only thing in the way was the Constitution of 
the United States. 

Take them at their word 

Let us take these gentlemen at their word. Let us have 
a show-down on this proposition. According to declarations 
of these leading advocates of the liquor interests, they are 
perfectly willing to join hands to amend the constitution. 
Let us give them the opportunity. 



132 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

Of course, they will find some other weapon with which to 
fight. They will at once discover some other great calamity 
that would come upon the people if the Prohibition amend- 
ment to the Constitution were to be submitted to the States. 
This is to be expected. The time has come, however, when 
the Christian, moral, law-abiding, liberty-loving citizenship 
should stand up against all odds, in spite of vilification, 
falsification, persecution, and abuse, until there shall be 
indelibly written in enforceable form upon the statute books 
of the federal government, the complete Prohibition of the 
manufacture and sale of intoxicants. 

Make your case ready for court 

There are many ways of finding out if the plans being 
adopted are proving or likely to prove successful. One way 
of testing their strength and probable outcome is to note 
their effect upon the leaders of the opposition. A careful 
study of the following, a part of a leading editorial in the 
National Liquor Dealers' Journal, September 10, 1913, should 
inspire every enemy of the liquor business with a spirit of 
confidence concerning the wisdom of the proposition to 
amend the Federal Constitution as indicated above. 

"Ultimately all questions must be settled by moral 
standards; only in this way can mankind be saved 
from self-effacement. The liquor traffic cannot save 
itself by declaring that government is incapable of 
coping with the problem it presents ; when the people 
decide that it must go, it will be banished. We are 
not discussing the benefit or justice of Prohibition; 
but its possibility, and its probability in present cir- 
cumstances. To us there is 'The handwriting on the 
wall/ and its interpretation spells doom. For this 
the liquor business is to blame. It seems incapable of 
learning any lesson of advancement, or any motive 
but profit. To perpetuate itself, it has formed alli- 
ances with the slums that repel all conscientious and 
patriotic citizens. It deliberately aids the most corrupt 
political powers, and backs with all of its resources 
the most unworthy men, the most corrupt and recreant 



AMEND THE CONSTITUTION 133 

officials. It does not aid the purification of municipal, 
State, or national administration. Why? Because it 
has to ask immunity for its own lawlessness. That 
this condition is inherently and inevitably necessary 
we do not believe, but it has come to be a fact, and 
the public which is to pass on the matter in its final 
analysis believe anything bad that anybody can tell it 
of the liquor business. Why? Let the leaders of the 
trade answer. Other lines of business may be as 
bad, or even worse, but it is not so plainly in evidence. 
The case of the liquor traffic is called for adjudica- 
tion by the American people and must be ready for 
trial. Other cases may be called later, but the one 
before the court cannot be postponed. But, as in the 
past, the men most concerned are playing for post- 
ponement, not for acquittal. Is it because they fear 
the weakness of their defense that they fear to go 
on trial? Looking the facts in the face is best. There 
are billions of property involved, and an industry of 
great employing and taxpaying ability; but when the 
people decide that the truth is being told about the 
alcoholic liquor trade, the money value will not count, 
for conscience aroused puts the value of a man above 
all other things." 

Some Pertinent Questions 

What has been the contribution of the Prohibition Party 
toward the ultimate victory of national Prohibition? 

What has the Woman's Christian Temperance Union ac- 
complished toward that end? 

In what ways has the work of the Anti-Saloon League 
been effective ? 

Is a program to amend the Federal Constitution one upon 
which all of the temperance forces can unite and for which 
they can work in harmonious cooperation? 

Will our State ratify such a proposed amendment? 

What can be done in this community to make such rati- 
fication more probable? 

How could our Federal Government be supported if all of 
the internal revenue coming from the tax on alcoholic liquors 
were abolished? 



134 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

What influences can be brought to bear upon our senators 
and congressmen to help them to vote as they should? 

What will be the probable attitudes of the States of the 
Union toward the ratification of the proposed amendment? 

How can the churches do more than they are now doing 
to create public sentiment in favor of the present nation-wide 
campaign ? 

Just what is the present value of such public opinion? 

What per cent of the area and population of the United 
States can now be counted upon to ratify the proposed 
amendment? 

Can they be united and organized so as to achieve success? 

What reasons have we to believe that a saloonless nation 
is not an impossibility? 

Class Discussion 

It would be unwise to let any ardent admirer of any one 
of the parties or organizations referred to in the opening 
paragraph of the lesson monopolize too much time. The 
discussion should result in the intensification, not of the 
partisan spirit, but rather the spirit of good will and co- 
operative endeavor. It should emphasize the common pur- 
pose. Guard against everything that interferes with such a 
result. 

Some time should be given to the discussion of the history 
of the temperance movement ; but only such aspects of that 
history as are pertinent in the light of the pending crisis 
should be presented. 

What Our Class Can Do 

It was suggested, in connection with the first lesson, that 
all facts brought out in the various investigations of local 
or State conditions should be carefully preserved. It is 
highly important that at the close of the course, such reli- 
able information as has been secured be forwarded to Dr. 



AMEND THE CONSTITUTION 135 

Henry H. Meyer, 220 West Fourth Street, Cincinnati, O. 
On the basis of the information thus secured, new facts, of 
national significance, can be used to further the general 
movement. 

Select out of the numerous plans of activity suggested in 
connection with former lessons those that can be carried on 
permanently by the class. Plan to do something throughout 
the year. 



LESSON XIV 

NATIONAL ASPECTS OF THE 
LIQUOR PROBLEM 

The Scripture Reference 

From that time began Jesus to show unto his dis- 
ciples, that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer 
many things of the elders and chief priests and 
scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised 
up. — Matthew 16. 21. 

And they did not receive him, because his face 
was as though he were going to Jerusalem. — Luke 
9. 53- 

And when he had thus spoken, he went on before, 
going up to Jerusalem. 

And it came to pass, when he drew nigh unto Beth- 
phage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, 
he sent two of the disciples, saying, Go your way 
into the village over against you; in which as ye 
enter ye shall find a colt tied, whereon no man ever 
yet sat: loose him, and bring him. And if any one 
ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say, 
The Lord hath need of him. And they that were 
sent went away, and found even as he had said unto 
them. And as they were loosing the colt, the owners 
thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the colt? And 
they said, The Lord hath need of him. And they 
brought him to Jesus : and they threw their garments 
upon the colt, and set Jesus thereon. And as he went, 
they spread their garments in the way. And as he 
was now drawing nigh, even at the descent of the 
mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the dis- 
ciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud 
voice for all the mighty works which they had seen; 
saying, Blessed is the King that cometh in the name 
of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the 
highest. And some of the Pharisees from the multi- 
tude said unto him, Teacher, rebuke thy disciples. 

136 



NATIONAL ASPECTS 137 

And he answered and said, I tell you that, if these 
shall hold their peace, the stones will cry out. 

— Luke 19. 28-40. 

Now after these things were ended, Paul purposed 
in the spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia 
and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have 
been there, I must also see Rome. — Acts 19. 21. 

And the night following the Lord stood by him, 
and said, Be of good cheer : for as thou hast testified 
concerning me at Jerusalem, so must thou bear wit- 
ness also at Rome. — Acts 23. 11. 

These passages of Scripture can be used to suggest that 
both Jesus and Paul considered the national aspects of their 
ministries to be of first importance. 

The Lesson 

All branches of government must be arrayed against 
the liquor traffic 

The government of the American Republic is dual in 
character, its powers being divided between the States and 
the federal authority. The governments of the States and 
the federal government are both triune in nature, acting 
through legislative, executive and judicial branches. These 
two facts make it necessary for the anti-liquor forces to 
take possession not only of the State governments but also, 
the government of the Union; not only one branch, but all 
three branches. The folly of electing a State or national 
legislature that is arrayed against the liquor business while 
leaving the courts and all the executive offices in the hands 
of representatives of the liquor interests has been demon- 
strated again and again. Where is the wisdom in electing 
to office a President or a Governor who is opposed to the 
liquor traffic and at the same time leaving the legislature 
and the courts in the hands of those who are controlled by 
that traffic ? All government, both State and federal, through- 
out all their branches must be arrayed against it if permanent 
and complete success is to be achieved. 



138 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

The necessity of national control 

Anything less than national control of the liquor business 
is sure to be ineffective. "Local option necessarily fails 
because it does not co-ordinate the various branches and 
functions of government to the one single end that Prohibi- 
tion may be effective. It cannot do this in regard to the 
drink question because the local community has not the 
power to deal with it." 

There can be no local option on the drink question under 
our federal and State constitutions. Local option is only 
applicable to a question which arises locally and the option, 
to be truly such, must have a direct, controlling and con- 
clusive effect on the thing to which it is applied. A true local 
option can be found in the question of issuing bonds to 
build a water system. The State will do nothing to hinder 
the improvement and the federal government has no power 
to antagonize it. But the drink traffic is dependent for its 
proportions and power not upon local good-will or antago- 
nism but upon all the agencies of community, State and nation. 
The State controls the (a) manufacture, (b) intra-State com- 
merce, and (c) State taxation. The nation controls (a) 
interstate shipments, railroads, and navigable waters, (b) 
tariffs and treaties, (c) mails, (d) federal taxes and permits, 
(e) and testimony of internal revenue collectors. 

Why local option is an inadequate program 

Local option, unless supplemented by a policy that is more 
far reaching, is fundamentally inadequate. It directs the 
anti-liquor energies against the local saloon keeper when they 
should be directed against the thousands of breweries and 
distilleries. It recognizes an imaginary line, which has no 
existence except politically and, so far as the drink traffic 
is concerned, has no existence even political in the estimation 
of the federal government, which controls the majority of 
the powers controlling that traffic. 



NATIONAL ASPECTS 139 

There are only two units of legislation, the State and the 
nation. All other so-called units are purely imaginary. 

The weakness of State option 

State option, at the present time, is not completely success- 
ful because it is actively nullified by a federal government 
not in harmony with it. The action that makes a State "dry" 
often stops at mere legislative or executive control and leaves 
the opposition in possession of such other branches of the 
government as are made to nullify the practical results of the 
partial victory. 

The federal government directly and absolutely ignores all 
State legislation forbidding the sale of liquors and, in the 
esteem and operations of the federal authorities, such laws 
have no existence de facto. 

This has been brutally illustrated more than once by the 
federal officials in dry States, who within their borders have 
shamelessly advertised and auctioned liquors. Federal officers 
are not permitted to testify in court against "speakeasy" 
keepers or to otherwise aid in suppressing such law-defying 
institutions. Through the medium of interstate commerce, 
the federal government inflicts gross injustice, injury and 
insult upon Prohibition States, pouring liquors into them 
despite the legislation and appeals of the people. 

The result of this following after false theories has been 
a complete failure to decrease the per capita consumption 
either of liquors or of absolute alcohol, the nation con- 
sidered as a whole, or to lessen the traffic's political power 
and influence. On the contrary both consumption and political 
influence have increased greatly. 

A national question 

The liquor question is not only theoretically but practically 
a national question. The enactment of a constitutional pro- 
hibitory amendment would insure that all succeeding ad- 
ministrations would be friendly to that policy. The executive 



140 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

power of a President actively friendly would be greater for 
the permanent solution of the problem than all State and 
local legislation. He could close saloons in our insular 
possessions, appoint as judges and district attorneys those 
who would act for the enforcement of anti-liquor laws, and 
in his messages and otherwise could lead public sentiment 
to complete total abstinence. 

The federal government and the liquor traffic 

In as far as the liquor traffic has "rights," they have been 
created by the federal government. The President holds the 
keys of every distillery and bonded warehouse in the United 
States. The relation of the federal government to the liquor 
traffic is most intimate. The opinion is held by some legal 
authorities that a Prohibition President, apart from ad- 
ditional legislation by Congress, can, under existing Supreme 
Court decisions, close the distilleries, breweries, etc., as 
being harmful to the common welfare. The constitutional 
courts recognize no inherent right to traffic in intoxicating 
liquors. All of the pro-liquor territory was created by the 
Republican party and the Democratic party, which have, 
through license, granted the privilege of trafficking in a 
commodity which, inherently, has no commercial rights. 

The Democratic party trying to destroy the partner- 
' ship zvith the liquor interests 

In a signed editorial, Secretary of State William J. Bryan 
has stated that 

"The Democrats of the nation have an issue to face 
and they may as well prepare for it. The liquor 
interests are at bay; they are on the defensive. They 
realize that they have but a few more years in which 
to fatten upon the woes of their victims, but they 
are fighting desperately and are willing to hold any 
party between them and the fire. The Democratic 
party cannot afford to shield the brewery, the distil- 



NATIONAL ASPECTS 141 

lery and the saloon from the rising wrath of a 
determined people. 

"Democracy is the nation's hope on political and 
economic questions — let it not, by taking sides with 
the liquor interests, repel those who put moral issues 
first. The young men of the country are democratic 
by nature, but they will not submit their claims to 
political preferment to those who conspire against 
the home and everything good — neither will they find 
pot-house politicians congenial party associates. 

"Those whose support depends upon subservience 
to the liquor interests, disgrace the party while they 
are with it, and then leave it if it refuses to obey 
them. They are a millstone about the party's neck. 
The Democratic party is the party of the future — 
it has a chance to enter the promised land — why allow 
the liquor interests to lead it into the wilderness? 
Get ready for the fight." 

National Prohibition the dominant issue 

The nation-wide Prohibition of the liquor traffic is an 
essential of the return of a ruling power to the people. It 
is a matter of bewilderment to the average man that "special 
privilege" is able to so completely dominate legislation and 
administration, when the preponderance of voting power lies 
with the "masses." The explanation is very simple. "Male- 
factors of great wealth" have every essential of power ex- 
cept votes. The liquor traffic has the votes. In exchange 
for continued protection, these votes are placed at the service 
of corrupt business. The real issue is the destruction of 
this go-between, which gives political power to industrial, 
social, and moral evil. 

Federal income from the sale of liquor 

As long as the federal government collects revenue directly 
from liquor manufacturers, thereby giving the liquor business 
a legal standing, the national aspects of Prohibition must be 
given primary consideration. In Our Standard, a liquor 
journal published in Indianapolis, Indiana, there appeared 
the following statement: 



142 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

"The retail liquor dealers of the State of Indiana, 
or of any other State in the Union, stand higher 
morally than any preacher or priest in the land. 
Why? Because they hold a certificate from the 
government of a good moral character." 

The Liberal Advocate, another liquor paper, has declared, 
concerning a proposed increase in the federal tax on beer 
and whisky: 

"The war special revenue bill has sounded the death 
knell of federal prohibition for a few years at any 
rate. The government cannot obtain taxes from 
liquor and prohibit it at one and the same time. The 
passage of the additional revenue bill stops for the 
time being all effective work in behalf of federal 
prohibition. If the protection given the brewing and 
distilling industries is sufficient inducement to the 
magnates of those industries to cause them to regard 
high taxation as a benefit rather than a burden, 
both Republican and Democratic candidates who 
want the wet vote will probably vote conspicuously 
for the revenue measure." 

While it is true that the federal government would not 
be likely to impose additional taxes upon liquor, and, under 
the same administration, prohibit its manufacture and sale, 
yet, with a change of administration the federal govern- 
ment that formerly had voted to increase license fees might, 
with consistency, enact Prohibition laws. It is at Washing- 
ton as well as at the several State capitals that the liquor 
traffic will finally meet its doom. During the year ending 
June 30, 1913, the internal revenue coming directly from 
the sale of liquors was $230,146,332.14. But the moral sense 
of the American people, when once aroused, will not accept 
even this vast amount as a bribe for cowardice or indifference. 

The liquor interests deeply concerned 

The present attitude of the press controlled by the liquor 
interests is evidence of the fact that those interests are 
deeply concerned as to the final outcome of the national 



NATIONAL ASPECTS 143 

Prohibition movement. In the September 12, 1914. issue of 
the Champion of Fair Play, the organ of the Illinois liquor 
dealers, there appeared this statement: 

"The wets in Congress will not oppose an increase 
on liquor and beer taxes, providing some guarantee is 
made that this constant and nonsensical fight on 
the liquor interests is stopped for a definite time. 
The time makes little difference, just so the time is 
definite." 

In another place the same paper prints the following: 

"Sneering talk about the fighters against intoxi- 
cants has gone out of use. So much gain has been 
made . . . that the liquor dealers and advocates have 
for some time acknowledged themselves on the run." 
"The best of our people . . . are believing that this 
nation will ere long become saloonless." "Our present 
Congress contains many members who would vote, 
if they had the chance, to pass a law submitting a 
constitutional Prohibition amendment. The Southern 
States are furnishing an increasing number of mem- 
bers and the belief is that success will crown the 
efforts of the members who are working for the 
extinction of this evil." 

The new day 

Already the sentiment in the nation, in favor of national 
Prohibition, is so strong that Congressmen dare not cause 
Prohibition bills to be held up by the committees as they 
once were. A new day has dawned. In referring to the 
new attitude of the public, the Montgomery, Alabama, 
Journal states : 

"The spread of the Prohibition sentiment in the 
United States in the last year has made a deep im- 
pression on leaders in Congress. 

"The events of that period, when viewed in the 
light of the ambitious program that the temperance 
advocates have set for themselves in the immediate 
future, are causing a lot of serious thinking and some 
anxiety on the part of members of Congress who 
look beyond their noses. 



144 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

"In fact many of the leaders believe they already 
see the Prohibition question looming as a national 
issue. They fear the time is nearing when a consti- 
tutional amendment providing for national Prohibi- 
tion will be submitted by Congress to a referendum 
of the States. 

"Such an amendment is now pending in both the 
House and Senate, and the promotion of it through 
Congress is the accomplishment toward which all the 
anti-rum forces are looking most hopefully. 

"It has long been a matter of comment in Wash- 
ington that the only way in which temperance legis- 
lation can be prevented in Congress is by holding the 
bills in committee and keeping them from the floor of 
the House or the Senate. When the average Con- 
gressman is face to face with the liquor question 
and a delegation of Woman's Christian Temperance 
Union, he may drink like a fish himself, but he will 
promptly record his vote in favor of the 'drys.' " 



Some Pertinent Questions 

In what three ways is governmental control of the liquor 
usiness necessary in order to be complete? 

What is the fundamental weakness of Local option? 

Why is it an inadequate program? 

How is State option practically nullified? 

How far can the executive power of the President go in 
holding the liquor interests in check? 

What significance attaches to the statement of William J. 
Bryan concerning the relation of the Democratic party to the 
liquor business? 

What effect does the granting of federal licenses have upon 
the legal and moral standing of the liquor traffic? 

What indications are there that the national Prohibition 
movement is causing deep concern on the part of liquor 
advocates ? 

Show its effect upon liquor leaders. 

Why does the New Testament place so much emphasis 
upon Jesus' ministry in Jerusalem and Paul's in Rome? 



NATIONAL ASPECTS 145 

Class Discussion 

During the discussion it should be kept in mind that it is 
the aim of this lesson merely to show that there is a national 
aspect of the liquor question and that this is the one that, at 
present, should be kept in the foreground. The local and 
State aspects are important but it is suggested that the dis- 
cussion be not permitted to include these. 

What Our Class Can Do 

See to it that, through personal correspondence, both 
United States Senators and Representatives — especially those 
who represent the community in which the class is located — 
are made aware of the anti-liquor sentiment that exists among 
those who comprise their constituents. Make these Con- 
gressmen feel that they are being watched by intelligent men 
who are informed on the liquor question and who are eager 
to see this great evil abolished. 



LESSON XV 

SUCCESSFUL ANTI-LIQUOR 
METHODS 

The Scripture Reference 

If there is therefore any exhortation in Christ, if 
any consolation of love, if any fellowship of the 
Spirit, if any tender mercies and compassions, make 
full my joy, that ye be of the same mind, having 
the same love, being of one accord, of one mind ; 
doing nothing through faction or through vainglory, 
but in lowliness of mind each counting other better 
than himself; not looking each of you to his own 
things, but each of you also to the things of others. 
Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ 
Jesus : who, existing in the form of God, counted 
not the being on an equality with God a thing to be 
grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a 
servant, being made in the likeness of men ; and 
being found in fashion as a man, he humbled him- 
self, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the 
death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly 
exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is 
above every name; that in the name of Jesus every 
knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on 
earth and things under the earth, and that every 
tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to 
the glory of God the Father. 

So then, my beloved, even as ye have always obeyed, 
not as in my presence only, but now much more in 
my absence, work out your own salvation with fear 
and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you 
both to will and to work, for his good pleasure. Do 
all things without murmurings and questionings; 
that ye may become blameless and harmless, children 
of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked 
and perverse generation, among whom ye are seen 
as lights in the world. — Philippians 2. 1-15. 

146 



SUCCESSFUL ANTI-LIQUOR METHODS 147 

The Lesson 

Importance of right methods 

The people who represent the anti-liquor forces are rapidly 
coming to realize the practical necessity of having a common 
understanding with regard to the methods to be followed. 
As long as the liquor interests can divide or scatter the attack 
against them, their position is secure. Unless there is some 
way of unifying or concentrating the temperance forces, the 
liquor problem will never be solved. The liquor interests are 
defended by a system of elaborate, national organizations. 
All of their resources can be concentrated at one point or 
another as circumstances demand. Success will remain with 
them until similar power of concentration and unity char- 
acterizes all opposing agencies. 

Present separation of anti-liquor forces 

It is differences of opinion as to method more than any 
other one thing that has caused this deplorable lack of unity. 
For many years, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union 
has been conducting an effective and nation-wide campaign of 
education. The Prohibition party has had a vivid apprecia- 
tion of the fact that the liquor representatives control every 
other political party and has therefore felt the necessity of 
creating a separate party based primarily upon this great 
issue. The Anti-Saloon League has noted particularly the 
vicious and virulent influence of liquor representatives upon 
State and national legislators and upon those responsible for 
the administration of the laws. But the hope of ultimate 
triumph lies in mutual appreciation, intelligent sympathy, and 
cooperation among these and all other agencies working for 
the same general cause — a liquorless nation. 

The common purpose 

It is quite natural that, with such a large number of people 
involved and with a question so complicated and vast, honest 



148 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

differences of opinion with reference to method should arise. 
But the time has come when the common purpose is being 
kept in the foreground. The problem is being studied in its 
entirety. Any success of one method that involves the injury 
of another can no longer be justified. A more comprehensive 
standard of success has been adopted. The question of the 
hour is, can all who have this common purpose be united in 
order to carry through one program, to adopt a common 
method ? 

The success of the educational method 

It is now apparent that the method of teaching children the 
evil effects of alcohol and of creating temperance sentiment 
in the homes has justified itself. A generation of anti-liquor 
voters has been raised up. They are ready to put their con- 
viction into action. The immediate question to be decided is, 
which of two remaining methods should now be adopted — 
namely, that of putting a prohibitory amendment into the 
national constitution or of establishing, at Washington, a 
Prohibition administration. The moral, intellectual and polit- 
ical resources with which to oppose the liquor interests are 
greater than they ever have been before. Can they now be 
mobilized ? 

The task of amending the federal constitution 

In order to amend the federal constitution, the bill must 
first pass each House of Congress by a two-thirds majority, 
and then be ratified by three fourths of the States. In the 
United States Senate, there are ninety-six members of which 
thirty-two are one tWd, and sixty-four, two thirds. Thus 
to secure the amendment, the prohibitory forces must con- 
trol sixty-four votes in the Senate, for if the liquor interests 
can control thirty-three votes, it is lost. The national House 
of Representatives has four hundred and thirty-five members, 
of which one hundred and forty-five are one third, and two 
hundred and ninety two thirds. To secure the amendment, 



SUCCESSFUL ANTI-LIQUOR METHODS 149 

the Prohibition forces must control two hundred and ninety 
votes in the House, for if the liquor interests can control 
one hundred and forty-six votes, it is lost. 

Can the votes be mustered?* 

In the Senate. If the liquor men can elect one Senator 
from each of thirty-three States, they win. Or, if they can 
elect both Senators from each of sixteen States, and one 
from another State, they win. Or, any combination which 
will give them thirty-three votes in the Senate, will carry 
the day against the amendment. In order to pass the amend- 
ment bill, both Senators from each of thirty-two States must 
be elected, or some other combination which will give sixty- 
four votes must be made. 

In the House. As a rule, the large cities send pro-liquor 
Representatives. Forty of our largest cities have enough 
voting power in the House to almost, if not quite, defeat 
the amendment bill. Besides, not a few of the country 
districts which include the smaller cities and larger towns, 
send pro-liquor Representatives. All told, it looks compara- 
tively easy for the anti-amendment forces to rally the neces- 
sary one hundred and forty-six votes to defeat it. At least, 
much easier than for the Prohibition people to rally the 
necessary two hundred and ninety to pass it. It is a question 
calling for the most serious thought, whether the combined 
Prohibition forces of the country, the Anti- Saloon League, 
the Prohibition party, and any others, all pulling together 
harmoniously for the amendment plan, can at the present 
time elect two hundred and ninety or over, as against one 
hundred and forty-five or less. 

As to ratification 

Suppose the amendment bill to have passed Congress, and 
to be before the State Legislatures for ratification. In order 

*The writer has used some material prepared by A. S. Hunter and printed in 
The Daily Times, Beaver, Pa., but does not present Mr. Hunter's position. 



150 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

to win out, the prohibitory forces must control a majority 
vote in each House in thirty-six States. They may have a 
majority (or even a unanimous) vote in each House of 
thirty-five States, and a majority (or unanimous) vote in 
one House of each of the other thirteen States, and yet fail; 
for, in order to prevent ratification, the liquor interests need 
only to have a majority vote, in one House, of each of thirteen 
States. That is to say, of ninety-six Houses which may be 
called upon to vote on the question before it is decided, the 
liquor men need to control only thirteen Houses, or one in 
seven, to compass its defeat, while the temperance advocates 
would, in that contingency, need to control eighty-four Houses 
in order to win. In any case they cannot win with fewer than 
seventy-two Houses in favor. That is a ratio of five-and- 
a-half to one at best; and possibly it may be six-and-a-half 
to one. 

Amending the national constitution was purposely made 
very difficult, almost to impossibility. Even with all the 
tremendous anti-liquor sentiment of the nation unified, and 
working harmoniously for the amendment, as previously sug- 
gested, the great difficulty of mustering the votes necessary 
to ratify it, is apparent. This is not a matter for mere 
hilarious enthusiasm. It demands sober judgment. The 
liquor interests will use any means whether fair or foul, 
while the prohibitory workers are bound to respect moral 
principles. 

The Prohibition party plan 

To pass a Prohibition law in Congress there is needed 
only a majority of one vote in each House. In the Senate, 
that is forty-nine, and in the House two hundred and 
eighteen. As between the amendment and the law, the law 
is easier by fifteen votes in the Senate and seventy-two in 
the House. To defeat a law, the liquor men must likewise 
control forty-nine votes in the Senate and two hundred and 
eighteen in the House, instead of thirty-three and one 



SUCCESSFUL ANTI-LIQUOR METHODS 151 

hundred and forty-six. That is, both sides stand on an 
equal footing. The law does not have to be ratified by the 
States. 

The question of permanency 

The relative ease by which prohibitory legislation can be 
enacted would suggest that this method should be adopted. 
But the adoption of this method must include not only the 
election of a majority of the national Senate and House of 
Representatives at any one time, but also for all time to 
come. The wavering between pro-liquor and anti-liquor 
legislation increases the opportunities for the liquor interests 
to use legislative trickery, the buying of votes and other 
immoral methods. The mere passage of a law does not 
carry with it a guarantee that that law will be effectively 
administered or that it will not soon be repealed. While it 
would be more difficult to obtain an amendment of the 
federal constitution, the permanency of such a victory would 
be practically assured. It is hardly conceivable that such an 
amendment, once secured, would ever be changed. The 
power of the liquor interests to modify the federal constitu- 
tion is now inadequate. If driven out by an amended con- 
stitution, liquor would never come back. 

What Congress can do 

If it were possible to maintain a permanent anti-liquor 
majority in both Houses, the following results might be 
secured : 

1. Congress can repeal the present internal revenue 
laws, as applying to liquors, thus dissolving the part- 
nership of the government in the traffic. This will 
destroy the legal defense of the traffic, and require it 
to stand or fall by its own merits or demerits. 

2. Congress can absolutely prohibit the liquor 
traffic, manufacture and sale, in all federal territory, 
which includes the District of Columbia, the Indian 



152 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

reservations, and all government buildings and 
premises. 

3. Congress can absolutely prohibit the importa- 
tion of liquor from foreign countries. 

4. Congress can absolutely prohibit the exportation 
of liquor to foreign countries. 

5. Congress can absolutely and unconditionally 
prohibit all interstate shipments of liquor. 

6. Congress can absolutely prohibit the use of the 
mails to all publications containing liquor advertise- 
ments; and also to circulars and written letters of 
that nature, as now to obscene matter. It can pro- 
hibit the interstate carrying of such matter by freight, 
express, or otherwise, by common carriers ; and also 
the interstate use of the telegraph and telephone in 
those interests. A similar law was effective against 
the lottery, and would be effective in this case. 

When liquor cannot be shipped across the national bound- 
ary, nor across the State lines, nor advertised within the 
States, the traffic will be fatally crippled. This will make 
State-wide Prohibition fully effective, which it has never 
been; and will stimulate the several States to prohibit the 
traffic within their own borders. 

The amendment not necessary first 

All the above Congress can do without an amendment to 
the national constitution. There is no objection to such an 
amendment, and it will come in time after Prohibition senti- 
ment under statutory Prohibition has been created. But, it 
is not essential to have the liquor traffic prohibited by the 
national constitution, any more than to have smuggling and 
lotteries prohibited by it. It is unthinkable that Congress 
would legalize either one; and after statutory Prohibition has 
been in operation for a few years it will be as unthinkable 
that Congress would again legalize the liquor traffic. 

The administrative plan 
A national administration includes the President and Con- 



SUCCESSFUL ANTI-LIQUOR METHODS 153 

gress. President Wilson received only about forty per cent 
of the popular vote, and that per cent would have elected a 
President of the Prohibition party. But it is evident that 
this party is not yet sufficiently popular to put in power a 
national Prohibition administration. The power vested in 
the President makes it very desirable that the chief executive 
of the nation have back of him a party that would greatly 
strengthen his administrative policy. But because the success 
of the Prohibition party has been so limited, up to the 
present time, and until the issue has become sufficiently 
dominant to make possible an anti-liquor administration, the 
endeavor to crystallize whatever anti-liquor sentiment there is 
among legislators of all parties must be made. To wait until 
the Prohibition party is in power before any legislative 
efforts are ' undertaken would seem to be as unwise as to 
neglect to work for an anti-liquor administration while 
endeavoring to crystallize sentiment in Congress. Where it 
is possible to put a Prohibition candidate into office that 
should be done. Where that is not possible there should be 
selected from the representatives of other parties those of 
known anti-liquor convictions. Then all such sentiment among 
officers and legislators should find expression in law and 
constitutional amendment. 

There must be united effort 

The only possible hope of destroying this monster enemy, 
the liquor traffic, is in a bona fide union of all the Prohibition 
forces. In colonial days it was a common saying, "United, 
we stand; divided, we fall." Applied to the present situation, 
it is, "United, we win; divided, we fall." The signers of the 
Declaration of Independence realized that "We must all hang 
together, or we shall all hang separately." The liquor traffic is 
with us now principally because its enemies have not hung to- 
gether in the past. We have been fighting it in squads. It is 
high time we should abandon this division of forces. We 
cannot longer be guiltless, and continue to fight it at random. 



154 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

The tzvo plans not incompatible 

The Anti-Saloon League can have no fundamental objec- 
tion to statutory Prohibition, and the Prohibition party can 
have no such objection to prohibitory amendment. Wherever 
there is the slightest hope of electing a candidate on the 
Prohibition ticket an earnest effort to do so should be made. 
But where such a party candidate, because of local or any 
other conditions, cannot be elected, the voter should try to 
elect a candidate who is opposed to the liquor interests even 
though he is not running on a Prohibition ticket. While the 
importance of immediate legislation is not overlooked, the 
fact remains that probably a prohibitory administration will 
be placed in power before a prohibitory amendment can be 
secured. Political antagonism to the liquor interests must take 
precedence of mere party loyalty. In some cases, loyalty 
to one's party will be the method by which intelligent opposi- 
tion to liquor will be expressed. In others, however, it will 
be the independent voter whose influence will be most imme- 
diately effective. 

The responsibility of the voter 

The administration plan contemplates a party back of the 
laws, responsible for their enactment, and pledged to their 
enforcement. Under such conditions, party pride as well as 
principle is at stake in making good party pledges. This has 
been illustrated for years in the Republican high tariff pro- 
gram, and is now seen in the Democratic low tariff, cur- 
rency, and trust legislation. A Prohibition party administra- 
tion will have every incentive to make good, and no incentive 
to neglect its own laws. On the other hand, the amendment 
plan proposes to take advantage of all anti-liquor forces 
represented in both Houses of Congress. It is seldom that 
any candidate is elected either to the Senate or House of 
Representatives on an exclusively liquor platform. But no 
matter what the main planks in a candidate's platform, he 
should be forced to declare his position on the liquor ques- 



SUCCESSFUL ANTI-LIQUOR METHODS 155 

tion. Under present conditions, it is difficult to conceive of 
any issue that should take precedence of this one in determin- 
ing how a Christian voter should cast his vote. 

The Hobsoji resolution 

That the time for decisive action is rapidly approaching is 
seen in the fact that the national prohibitory amendment 
known popularly as the Hobson Resolution — which was voted 
upon in the House of Representatives in December, 1914, 
received a majority vote. The votes in favor of it numbered 
one hundred and ninety-seven, with the opposition numbering 
one hundred and eighty-nine. This vote is all the more 
significant in view of the fact that in the judgment of many, 
the bill, as drafted, was inherently weak. It did not propose 
to prohibit the manufacture, importation or exportation of 
liquor. It reads, "Manufacture for sale," etc. In applying 
such a law, it would be necessary to produce conclusive legal 
evidence of sale or of intended sale. With alert attorneys 
working to protect the violators, this would be difficult. But 
in spite of this weakness and of other difficulties, a majority 
for it was secured. Evidently the day is not far distant when 
both of the older parties will be forced to declare their 
position in some form of preelection pledge with reference 
to this gigantic evil. 

The present crisis 

The successful use of the educational method during past 
years is showing excellent results. It has supplied adequate 
resources, both moral and political, to make a final political 
victory possible. To determine which political method will 
unite all of the temperance forces is an immediate necessity. 
Every Christian voter is now under obligation to help win 
a decisive victory. The common purpose must take precedence 
of every other consideration. The methods that will unite 
the anti-liquor forces should receive hearty and cooperative 
support. 



156 THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

Some Pertinent Questions 

Why is it important to determine the right method of 
opposition to liquor interests? 

What three methods have been employed? 

To what extent has the educational method been successful ? 

What is necessary to secure an amendment to the federal 
constitution ? 

What is the plan of the Prohibition party? 

Point out elements of strength in each of these plans. 

What are their weaknesses? 

What liquor laws could Congress enact provided that a 
majority of its members were anti-liquor in their convictions? 

Explain the advantages of having an anti-liquor adminis- 
tration in power. 

Are the Prohibition and prohibitory plans incompatible? 

Why is the vote on the Hobson Resolution a source of 
encouragement ? 

Class Discussion 

It is especially important that the discussion of this lesson 
be free from an ardently partisan spirit. The aim should be, 
first, to teach an intelligent and sympathetic appreciation of 
the present situation in all of its aspects. It is only after all 
of the facts are in hand that the class will be ready fully to 
appreciate how to unite upon a rational comprehensive plan. 



What Our Class Can Do 

Plan to have a union meeting of all the members of 
temperance organizations in the community. Be sure that the 
speakers are broad in their sympathies, not blindly partisan. 
Let the meeting stand for unity of purpose and cooperation 
in effort. 



SOME OF THE BEST BOOKS ON THE LIQUOR 
PROBLEM 

(Prepared by Mr. Deets Pickett) 

The Legalized Outlaw, by Judge Samuel R. Artman (1908), $i. 
Alcohol and the Human Body, by Sir Victor Horsley and 

Dr. Mary D. Sturge (1908), 376 pages. $1.50. 
Alcohol : How it Affects the Individual, the Community, and 

the Race, by Dr. Henry Smith Williams (1909). 50 cents. 
Social Welfare and the Liquor Problem, by Harry S. Warner 

(1909), 274 pages. $1. 
A Century of Drink Reform, by Dr. August F. Fehlandt 

(1904), 410 pages. $1. 
History of the Prohibition Party, by Wm. P. F. Ferguson, 

Editor National Prohibitionist (1910). $1.50. 
Profit and Loss in Man, by Professor A. A. Hopkins (1908). 

$1.20. 
Wealth and Waste, by Professor A. A. Hopkins (1895). $1. 
American Prohibition Year Book (1910-11-12). Paper, 25 

cents; cloth, 50 cents. 
The Drink Problem in its Medico-Sociological Aspects, by Dr. 

T. N. Kelynack (1907), 8vo, 300 pages. $2.50. 
The Passing of the Saloon, Hammell (1908), 436 pages. $2. 
The People vs. The Liquor Traffic, by John B. Finch. Paper, 

25 cents. 
The Challenge of the City, by Josiah Strong (1907), S3 2 

pages. 50 cents. 
Temperance Progress in the 19th Century, by Woolley and 

Johnson. $2. 
The Christian Citizen, by John G. Woolley (1900) ; vol. 1, 254 

pages; vol. 2, 272 pages. 75 cents each; 2 vols., $1. 
The Saloon-Keeper's Ledger, by Dr. Louis Albert Banks 

(1895). 75 cents. 

157 



158 BOOKS ON THE LIQUOR PROBLEM 

A Sower, by John G. Woolley (1898), 76 pages. 50 cents. 
Civilization by Faith, by John G. Woolley (1899), 136 pages. 

50 cents. 
Substitutes for the Saloon; Committee of Fifty, by Raymond 

G. Calkins (1901), 397 pages. $1.30. 
Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem; Committee of 

Fifty, by Koren (1890), 327 pages. $1.50. 
The Psychology of Alcoholism, by Geo. B. Cutten (1907). 

$1.50. 
Regulation of the Liquor Traffic, by various authors; Annals 

of American Academy of Political and Social Science, 

vol. 32, No. 2, Nov., 1908, 150 pages. Paper, $1; 

cloth, $1.50. 
The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform, edited by W. D. P. 

Bliss (1908), 1321 pages. $7.50. 
The Economics of Prohibition, by Dr. James C. Fernald. $1.50. 
The World Book of Temperance, by Dr. and Mrs. Wilbur F. 

Crafts (1909), 288 pages. 75 cents. 
Cyclopedia of Temperance and Prohibition; for facts and 

history of all organizations. Available at many public 

libraries. 

Public Documents of Special Value: 
Some Scientific Conclusions Concerning the Liquor Problem 

and its Practical Relation to Life; Senate Document No. 

48, 61st Congress, 1st Session (1909), 179 pages. 
Indiana Circuit Court Decision (Artman) Relating to Liquor 

License ; Senate Doc. 284, 59th Congress, 2d Session ; 

Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C. 
Report of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue (published 

annually in January). 
Statistical Abstract of the United States (published annually 

in March). 
"Relation of the Liquor Traffic to Pauperism, Insanity, and 

Crime," Mass. Bureau of Statistics of Labor (1896). 
"Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem," 12th Annual 

Report of the United States Commission of Labor (1898). 



INDEX 



Abstinence 

and longevity, 19. 

the only safe position, no. 
Accident due to drink, 68, 69. 
Advertisements of liquor, 50. 
Alcohol 

as a household remedy, 18. 

as a source of poverty, 95ff. 

legitimate uses of, 38. 

mental effects of, 69. 

moral effects of, 45, 46, 59. 

origin and nature of, 12, 14. 

physical effects of, 20. 

the ally of disease, 18. 
Allies of the Liquor Traf- 
fic, 6, 7. 
Amendment, not necessary 

first, 152. 
Animal Life, effects of alcohol 

upon, 2j. 
Blood affected by alcohol, 15. 
Brewers 

as owners of saloons, 76. 

The U. S. Brewers' Asso- 
ciation, 7. 
Child 

development of, retarded, 
60. 

in the public school, 54, 

55, 56. 
parental responsibility for, 

86. 
rights of, 86. 
Common Purpose, the, 147. 
rights of, 86. 



Congress, what it can do, 151. 
Constitution, Federal, 
amendment of, 13 iff. 
task of amending, 148. 
Consumer of liquor, 70. 
Consumption of liquor in the 

U. S., 4. 
Cost of Drink 
direct, 4. 
indirect, 5, 101. 
Crime, 29. 

definition of, 33, 34. 

juvenile, 99. 

promoted by the liquor 

interests, 34, 38. 
traced to the saloon, 37, 
39- 
Crisis, the present, 155. 
Custom of drinking, 13. 
Dance Hall, 44. 
Death due to alcohol, 19, 20. 
Degeneracy, 24. 
Disease 

liability to, 18. 
of heart and blood ves- 
sels, 17. 
tuberculosis due to alco- 
hol, 59, 101. 
Drink, 17. 
Drink Habit 
effect of, 17. 
why begun, 113. 
Drunkard as a "consumer," 
70. 



159 



i6o 



INDEX 



Drunkenness, description of, 

16. 
Education 

conducted by the liquor 

interests, 8. 
liquor traffic and the pub- 
lic school, 53fL 
method of, 148. 
need of temperance edu- 
cation, 123. 
value of, 53. 
Efficiency 

mental, reduced by drink, 

69. 
physical, reduced by 
drink, 69, 70. 
Effort, need of united, 153. 
Endurance decreased by al- 
cohol, 65. 
Epilepsy caused by drink, 24. 
Ethics of the saloon keeper, 

57. 
Family 

health of, injured, 89. 
ties broken, 89, 90. 
Feeble-mindedness, 120. 
Germ of life, 28. 
Governmental opposition to 

liquor traffic, 137. 
Habit 

effect of drink, 17. 
how formed, 112. 
Health injured, 89. 
Heart affected by alcohol, 17. 
Heredity, effect of alcohol 

upon, 28, 29. 
Hobson Resolution, the, 155. 



Home 

and the saloon, 87. 
broken up by drink, 91. 
happiness of, destroyed, 

90. 
importance of, 85. 
income of, decreased, 87. 
of drunkard, 26. 
Human Life, value of, 24. 
Idiocy the result of alcohol, 24. 
Labor 

affected by the use of 

alcohol, 64ff., 70. 
importance of, 64. 
Legislation 
federal, 127. 
liquor legislation, "unco: 

stitutionai," 131. 
state, 126. 
License 

development of idea of, 

117. 
fees inadequate to meet 
cost to community, 119. 
municipal, 7. 
policy, 36, 37. 
Lincoln, attitude of, 116. 
Liquor 

federal income from sale 

of, 141. 
interests deeply con- 
cerned, 142. 
Local Option, an inadequate 

program, 138. 
Magnitude of liquor business, 

3, 9, 67. 
Manufacture of liquor, 3. 



■ 



IXDEX 



161 



Moral Forces need to be or- 
ganized, 79, 80. 
Moral Losses due to alcohol, 

120. 
Narcotic effects of alcohol, 14. 
National Control, necessity 

of, 138 
Newspaper 

an ally of the saloon, 7. 
corrupted by the liquor 
interests, 75. 
Parent 

injury of, by alcohol, 25 

26, 60. 
responsibility of, 86. 
Pauperism, 97, 100. 
Physical Effects of Alcohol 
general, 20, 67. 
upon the blood, 15, 17. 
upon the heart, 17. 
upon the muscles, 18. 
Politics and the liquor in- 
terests, 8, 74, jj, 78, 121. 
Poverty 

caused by drink, 98, 99. 
definition of, 95, 96. 
not cured by higher 
wages, 97. 
Prohibition 

benefits resulting from, 30, 

60. 
denned, 36. 
Federal, 127, 128 
a national question, 139. 
national, the dominant 

issue, 141. 
sentiment in favor of, 143. 



Question of permanency, 151. 
Revenue from liquor licenses 

no longer needed, 130. 
Right Methods, importance 

of, 147. 
Saloon 

and commercialized pros- 
titution, 46. 
effect upon society, 24. 
number of, 2. 
owned by brewers, 76. 
political influence of, 80. 
relation of to the social 

evil, 48, 49. 
social phase of, 1051!., 122. 
Saloon Keeper, greed of, 119. 
Sickness caused by drink, 68. 
Social Evil, 48, 49. 
Social Glass, 106, 107. 
Society, injury of, due to al- 
cohol, 75. 
Substitutes for the saloon, 

109, in. 
Suicide, 20. 

State Legislation, 126. 
State Option, weakness of, 

139. 
Stimulant, alcohol as a, 13. 
Tuberculosis, 59, 10 1. 
Vice, relation of the liquor 

business to, 3, 81. 
Virtue, first step from, 44. 
Voter, responsibility of, 154. 
Votes, question of securing, 

149. 
Wages, 3, 4, 5, 88 7 97. 
Webb Law, 40. 



